


How can I keep from singing?

by JoCarthage



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Human AU, Immigration issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Music, Operas, Political Campaigns, Queer Choir AU, Queerphobia, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 54,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21703072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: "By the middle of the third verse, Alex’s heart was racing; it felt like a fight. Not the music -- they were twining together perfectly, Michael’s honey baritone with Alex’s brassy tenor, mixing and swirling.The fight was the control over his instrument. He kept wanting to smile and the Es got musical theater bright until he got them under control. Michael glanced at him during a repeated chord and Alex gulped, his entire throat getting tense, the next note coming in sharp. He fixed the next note, but barely. Once Michael got to the “Amazing Grace” descant at the end, Alex felt -- free. Falling. Full."Alex Manes moves to Roswell for the first time at age 27. He joins the Queer Chorus of Roswell and meets a stunning baritone with a secret that might blow-up his whole world.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 374
Kudos: 154





	1. my life flows on

**Author's Note:**

> "My life flows on in endless song  
> above earth's lamentations  
> I hear the real, though far off hymn  
> that hails a new creation
> 
> Above the tumult and the strife  
> I hear it's music ringing  
> it sounds an echo in my soul  
> how can I keep from singing?
> 
> What though the tempest loudly roars  
> I hear the truth, it liveth  
> what though the darkness round me close  
> songs in the night it giveth
> 
> What storm can shake my inmost calm  
> while to that rock I'm clinging?  
> when love is Lord of heav'n and earth  
> how can I keep from singing?
> 
> amazing grace [When tyrants tremble sick with fear]  
> that saved a wretch like me [When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?]  
> I once was lost [In prison cell and dungeon vile]  
> but now am found [Our thoughts to them are winging]  
> was blind, but now [When friends by shame are undefiled]  
> I see  
> How can I keep from singing?"
> 
> Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSmIajqYvr4

**Roswell, New Mexico**

**August 1st, 2020 [94 Days Until the General Election]**

Alex Manes wiped the red grave dirt off his hands, rubbing his knuckles on the ragged Roswell summer scrub weed at the base of the headstone. He took a deep breath, working the moisture back into his mouth, and spat. He watched it drip down his father’s name, over “Beloved Father to Three Sons.”

Alex turned and winced. The long minutes kneeling had played hell on his missing limb. He stumbled his way back to his jeep.

He opened the door and the smell hit him: 5 flats of peonies, the rich, raw earth of them. The smell of the plastic around their bases. The clink of the gardening tools when he slammed the door and bumped his way out of the graveyard was a reminder:  _ you’re here.  _

_ He’s not. _

\--

45 minutes later, Alex’s hands were planting his rainbow of peonies in the King David Episcopal Church’s side yard, but in his mind he was playing the piano. It wasn’t a piece he’d played before; he’d always sung his Schubert lieder. The piano line was pretending to be a spinning wheel, rolling up and down and up and down the chord in a perfect circling cycle. He hummed the words:

> __ “Meine Ruh' ist hin,  
>  _ Mein Herz ist schwer;  
>  _ _ Ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer  
>  _ __ Und nimmermehr.”

He learned this lieder, along with all of his german solo pieces, during his one recuperative stay in Germany. He’d been singing in Air Force choirs since he’d mistakenly raised his hand at BMT when they’d asked who knew an instrument, and he’d said he could play piano and sing. This immediately doubled his overall duties, adding in choir and band rehearsal to the rest of his military training. But singing, being inside the music with other voices surrounding him, was the only time he felt safe.

Alex’s German voice teacher had spoken mostly opera English, enough to tell him when to breathe and how to breathe, how to get used to his new balance. She’d been the one to get him up and out of his wheelchair. She’d needled and badgered and reminded him to make sure he actually did his PT. She’d grumbled at him that she wasn’t going to waste time teaching him seated breath support when he was supposed to be up and about. 

She’d been the only person he’d said goodbye to when he’d been shipped out of Germany.

Alex hadn’t told her or anyone else why he had requested Roswell, NM. He’d never lived there, the only family he had there was 6 ft down. But no one had asked. He was under the impression that his commander back in Baghdad had confirmed they had a good PT team on the base, had signed the forms, and then figured it was out of her hands. 

He wasn’t -- he wasn’t unemployed, exactly. But his specific skills weren’t in high demand on the base and with only a few more months before he finished his commission he was on the lightest of desk duties. 

_ Come in for staff meetings and when folks ask, other than that -- Captain Manes. Alex. Just take some time to heal. That’s an order _ .

It was a cheap enough place to live, even if the 1950s alien kitsch was annoying. On his first day, he’d gotten a little apartment, put his music books on the one shelf the last tenant had left behind, and got a quick burger at the Crashdown Cafe.

Alex had a process, when he was sent to a new area: in his first few days, drive around to the churches, looking for one flying a rainbow flag or some other indication he was welcome. Walk into a service at 10:30am, open his mouth during the first song, and well -- that was usually that.

It felt crude, sometimes, how easy it was to find welcome in new towns of any size, any culture, relying just on his voice. They didn’t know about his leg, his exaggerated startle response, or why he froze-up when military men came in for a hug during the Passing of the Peace.

Most places never really ended up asking; his voice was enough for them.

At King David’s in Roswell, there wasn’t a choir, but he helped out on the piano when Juanita was out of town. After a few weeks, he’d asked Tony, the priest-in-charge, if he needed any help around the place. First it was fixing-up the computers, then re-running the phone lines. Then there was some electrical maintenance. Alex wasn’t particularly handy but he was a sure sight more handy than Debbie, the part-time admin; certainly more than Tony.

The entire parish was less than 50 in a building that could fit 200, so they didn’t really warrant a full priest, just a part-time priest-in-charge. Tony spent the rest of his time working as a marriage counselor over in Albuquerque.

But even with the tiny congregation, the diocese wanted to keep the church open. They’d had a church in Roswell for 300 years. Alex thought they were hoping religion came back in style sometime before they ran out of parishioners.

A few weeks ago, Debbie had taken him out to the side garden — really, a plot of dead earth no one had loved in a decade — pulled a spade out of her voluminous purple knock-off Prada purse, and put it in his hand.

“The rains are coming; make it bright. It doesn’t have to survive into next the summer. Just make it bright.”

Thus the totally desert-inappropriate peonies. Thus the rainbow, which Debbie did not like at all; but, well, Alex was only getting paid in smiles, so he could do what he wanted.

He’d just reached the part of the lieder where Gretchen was remembering Faust’s magic legs --  _ Sein hoher Gang, Sein' edle Gestalt, Seines Mundes Lächeln, Seiner Augen Gewalt _ \-- when he heard it, coming from the church basement, the choir room he’d repainted a month ago when the heat of the midsummer afternoon drove him inside, but never seen used.

Voices. Singing.

He began to hum along with the hymn — it had three verses, and then, something flipped, a descant rose, up, up, up — and  _ oh _ . That was the kind of baritone he liked, rich and red and enough to make his hands shake in time with his vibrato.

By the time Alex had finished the row of flowers, the music had faded with the late Saturday afternoon sunlight, leaving the church quiet and dusk-laden, the singers filing out from the far front door where Alex couldn’t hear them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrical translation:
> 
> Meine Ruh' ist hin, | My soul is heavy  
> Mein Herz ist schwer | my heart is sore  
> Ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer | I won't find my peace nevermore  
> Und nimmermehr | and nevermore
> 
> Sein hoher Gang, | his proud gait  
> Sein' edle Gestalt | his fine shape  
> Seines Mundes Lächeln | his smiling lips  
> Seiner Augen Gewalt | his power-filled eyes
> 
> I hope you all liked it! I've written all of the chapters, I just need to clean them up. I should be posting one chapter a day for the next 22 days.
> 
> For translations -- and there's going to be a lot of song lyrics in other languages because #opera -- do you prefer translations in the bottom text, setting it so you can hover over the words for a translation, something else?
> 
> PS: I sang opera semi-professionally for 10 years and have worked in politics for about the same amount of time, so both the major threads of this fic draw on my personal experience a lot more than my usual work. I hope you enjoy it!


	2. in endless song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now they get to meet!

**August 8th, 2020 [87 Days Until the General Election]**

Alex was high up in the rafters the next Saturday, hands scrubbed of grave dirt from that afternoon’s visit and a lightbulb between his teeth, when he heard the choir again. 

It was coming from the basement again, and he braced himself on the ceiling, trying to pick out the voices: four women, two men. A solid bass, a tenor, three altos and a soprano. Every military choir he’d sung in had had more men than women, but most churches struggled to get two basses to show up to church, much less to choir.

He could hear strong voices, coming together in harmony. He could barely pick-out the words:

> _ “My life flows on, in endless song -- ” _

And that was it. He worked his way down the ladder, trying to be mindful of his leg and mostly failing. Once he was on the ground, he was a lot steadier. He huffed in irritation with himself and walked down the dark red church carpet to the staff office in the back of the sanctuary.

He poked his head into the front office: “Hey Deb, what’s going on downstairs?”

She glanced down, a look of derision moving across her face: “Oh, that’s not your kind of thing, Captain. Don’t worry about it.”

“What -- music?”

“No, it’s -- ” she lowered her voice, “It’s the Gay Men’s chorus.”

“The what?”   


“The ‘Gay Men’s Chorus’, that’s what they’re calling themselves,” 

“Well, there’s at least four women’s voices --”

“‘Gay people’s chorus’ then. Fine.” She said through clenched teeth.   
  
“Ok, I just hadn’t heard them before.”

“Their season is August through April.”

“When’s their rehearsal up?” Alex asked.

“They’re punctual, I can say that for them. They’ll be over at 7, so in, oh, 15 minutes.”

Alex nodded: “Ok. Try that phone line again.”

She picked-up the phone, listening. “Dial tone’s there, Captain -- you’ve got magic hands!”

Alex shook his head: “I would take a magic foot over magic hands any day.”

She scrunched her brow, unsure if she could laugh or not.

“Sorry, Debbie.”

She shook her head: “You gonna have time for the lights too?”

“Nearly done -- I’m just getting the last of the dead bulbs replaced.”

10 minutes later, he screwed the last bulb in, hustling down the ladder, holding most of his weight on his hands to keep from putting too much on his prosthetic and keeping the last dead bulb between his teeth.

Alex heard the choir begin to stomp up the stairs and knelt behind a pew, pulling the bulb from between his teeth and putting it in the trash can he’d pulled out earlier from the office. He looked over the back of the pew to catch them coming up out of the basement stairs: first there were two dark-skinned Latino women bumping shoulders and laughing about something. Then a tall Latino man with deadly cheekbones. Then two women who could be African American or Afro-Latino or something else entirely. Then a curly-haired man -- Alex couldn’t guess what ethnicity he was. He could have been anywhere from Argentinian to Italian. Then an older, short white man holding a big binder with a pencil wedged behind his ear: the choir director.

Alex stood, heading straight for the older man, shoulders back, neck stiff and straight.

“Are you the choir director?” He asked, voice brusk.

The smaller man took a step back with startled eyes, looking-up at him.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw the curly-haired man stop and start walking back towards them.

He realized he must have been coming on strong; he’d lost some social graces along with his foot. He took a step back, pressing his weight on his heel.

“I sang in the Air Force for 10 years. I’m a tenor --”

“Son,” the older man said, holding his hand up: “You know this isn’t the church choir.”

Alex laughed a little: “Yeah, we don’t have a choir.”

“You’re a parishioner?”

“Yeah, just for the last couple of months. I’ve been looking for someplace to sing and I’m the loudest voice in the parish and I’m tired of it. I’d like to sing in a choir again.”

“I’m a rabbi over at Rodef Shalom,” The older man paused: “You know we’re --” he glanced over at the curly-haired man.

He jumped in: “The Queer Chorus. Used to be the Gay Men’s Chorus, but you know, bisexuality is a thing and there’s more SATB pieces than TTBB anyway.”

Alex let a smile flicker across his face: “Sounds like I’d fit right in.”

And just for a moment, the curly-haired man’s entire demeanor shifted. His shoulders slumped back, head tilted, eyes looking Alex up and down. Alex felt a flare of heat in a way he couldn’t remember feeling in a long time.

“We don’t have a formal audition process,” the music director broke in, “Do you have a couple of minutes? We can figure out your vocal range, see if you fit? Michael, want to stay to see how he does with harmonies?”

Michael shrugged one shoulder: “Sure, no problem.”

“Great, let’s head back down.”

Alex glanced to the front office: “Let me check-in with Debbie, I’m not sure if anyone else needs the music room on a Saturday night.”

The choir director’s shoulders stiffened a little: “Yeah, you should check with her.”

Alex poked his head in: “Hey Debbie, still got that dial tone?”

She nodded, smiling up at him.

“I’m gonna audition for the choir,” he started and her face froze, like she’d bitten an apple and found a lemon.

“Really?”

He tried to push through: “Is it ok if we take the room for another 15 minutes?”

“They only have it until 7:00pm.”

He wheedled: “Does anybody have it after?”

She glowered, not answering. 

“Come on Debbie, please?”

“Fine. But I’m telling Tony they ran over.”

“You can take the additional cost out of my smile stipend.”

Debbie finally allowed her mouth to soften a little bit.

“You need to be out in 15 minutes. I’ve got to close up.”

Alex nodded. He knew she didn’t actually have to go until 7:30, but it was the best he was going to get.

He slipped back out to the top of the basement stairs where the two men were hovering.

The choir director gave him a sympathetic look: “We can just do it before our next rehearsal --”

“What?” Alex said, frowning.

He paused, speaking slowly: “I assume Debbie told you no.”

“No -- we’ve got it for 15 minutes.”

The two men froze. The curly-haired man’s eyes were widening; they were the color of whiskey set on a sun-warmed windowsill. 

His voice was full of awe when he said: “You charmed Debbie.”

“I don’t know if ‘charmed’ is the right word, but she let us have the room for 15 more minutes.”

The choir director’s eyebrows were now raised high into his unfortunate bangs.

The curly-haired man stuck his hand out: “I’m Michael Guerin. Anybody who can take the dragon deserves a handshake.”

Alex shook it, feeling his hard calluses and warm grip.  
  
“I’m Marty Pascal,” the choir director said, holding his hand out to shake. “Want to head down and show us what you can do?”

Alex nodded, letting them go first, hand careful on the rail. 

He’d repainted the choir room in the first couple of months in town. He was glad to see the paint had held. The room took up nearly the entire footprint of the small church, with all of the tables and chairs for the frequent outdoor evening events stacked along one deep green wall, a mirrored wall -- probably installed by some long-ago dance school renter and never removed. 

Then there was the piano. 

Alex had quietly named her Bertha in his mind. She was full grand piano; God only knew how they’d gotten her down those narrow basement stairs. Maybe assembled her there? Maybe lowered her in when the foundation was laid and built the church around her? He had no idea. 

All he knew was she was the first thing he’d fallen in love with in this building. 

He glanced over at Michael as he sat down at Bertha and gently uncovered her keys.

The choir director set his red binder down on Bertha’s top, saying: “Alright, we don’t have like a very formal audition process. But it can help to get a sense of folks’ range, skills -- you can sight-read?”  
  
Alex nodded.

“Alright, how about,” Marty closed his eyes, and Alex jumped in.

“When I would move bases, they would usually ask me to sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ since it can show range and control,“

Marty quirked a smile, pulling the pencil from behind his ear: “Why not, go for it.”

> _ “Oh say can you see  
>  _ _ By the dawn’s early light,” _

Alex let his tenor filter out through the room, keeping his breathing even, letting his stomach push out to ensure his breath support was the best it could be. He’d started in the middle of his range knowing would need the upper end of it before the song was through.

Marty was looking at him politely. Alex knew he hadn’t done anything particularly impressive at this point.

> _ “What so proudly we hailed  
>  _ _ At the twilight’s last gleaming,” _

He made sure to bring his pharynx in at the end of “gleaming,” letting it roll around in his chest a little bit.

He saw Michael’s eyebrow quirk up a bit from behind the music stand and he refocused on the far wall.

> _ “And the rocket’s red glare  
>  _ _ The bomb’s --” _

His voice cracked a bit but he kept going as Marty made a quick note.

> _ “-- bursting in air  
>  _ _ Gave proof through the night  
>  _ _ That --” _

And on “That” he let his chest fill entirely with sound, letting it start to echo around the room, aiming it for the back left corner.

> _ “-- our flag was still there” _

He doubled the tempo; he didn’t have anyone accompanying him, so he could play around with meter as much as he wanted.

> “ _ Oh say, _ ”

And he pulled it all the way back, making those words staccato and pure, returning to the same quiet, controlled voice he started with. He glanced at Michael and from his curling grin, he could see Michael now realized that Alex’s quiet voice at the start had shown tight control over a big instrument rather than a small instrument played well.

> _ “Does that star spangled banner -- _ ”

And he let the word “banner” fill his mouth and the room until he could hear it pinging off the back wall.

> _ “Yet wave --” _

And he kept those notes straight: no flourishes, no grace notes. Just the words on the paper the way Frances Scott Keys had written them. 

He took a deep breath:

> _ “O’re the land of the free” _

Alex let the high, arcing grow big and then pull back, small and human and real again.

And then in the quietest tone he’d used yet, with precise, almost fragile articulation, he sang:

> _ “and the home of the brave.” _

He took a nose breath, then looked over at Marty. 

The choir director was grinning, hands raised as if to clap. Alex felt his cheeks heat and he found he couldn’t meet Michael’s smiling eyes.

“Could you do it straight tone?”

He sang through the first few bars, strangling his vibrato right down before Marty waved for him to stop.

“I won’t ask you to control your vibrato very often, we don’t do a lot of straight tones -- not a lot of straight  _ anything _ really -- but for some of the chant songs we’ve been playing around with, it’s really necessary. Particularly until we all get a sense for each other’s vibratos.”

Alex nodded.

“So, what’s your usual range?”

“About two and a half octaves. Three if it’s really needed. I usually sing tenor --”

“Yeah, your passaggio places you comfortably as a tenor.” Marty checked his phone: “We’ve got 7 more minutes. Let’s try some sight-reading. How about --”   
  
He looked down at his binder, frantic fingers flipping through. Michael reached over Bertha’s music stand and slipped the red monstrosity from Marty’s hands, flipping back to the first page, snapping the binder open and slipping the score out, holding it out to Alex.

“You want to sing the melody? Sight-sing it once all the way through. Loop right back around and I’ll come in with the harmony; we’ll see how you balance.”

Michael sat back down, graceful hands hovering over the keys: “You want to hear the starting note or the whole chord?”

Alex quirked a smile: “I could show off, but it’s been a while since I sang with a choir. Chord please.”

Michael gave him the key’s chord and then the first few progressions. The sense of it filled Alex’s mind as he watched the other man concentrate on his fingering.

Michael looked up at him and Alex took a quick nose breath. Then he lifted his eyebrows, the way he always reminded himself to let his breath come up-and-over. He opened up his soft palate, which had gotten suddenly tense at the expression in Michael’s eyes. He made his body relax, opened his mouth, and sang.

> “ _ My life flows on, in endless song _ ,”

He sang through the melody of the first two verses, then Michael came in with the harmony.

By the middle of the third verse, Alex’s heart was racing; it felt like a fight. Not the music -- they were twining together perfectly, Michael’s honey baritone with Alex’s brassy tenor, mixing and swirling. 

The fight was the control over his instrument. He kept wanting to smile and the Es got musical theater bright until he got them under control. Michael glanced at him during a repeated chord and Alex gulped, his entire throat getting tense, the next note coming in sharp. He fixed it on the next note, but barely. Once Michael got to the  “Amazing Grace”  descant at the end, Alex felt -- free. Falling. Full. It was everything he’d been missing. 

Once they finished, Marty stepped between them.

“That was -- that was something special.” He looked over at Alex, making another note. “‘How Can I Keep from Singing’ is our warm-up song, kind of a diagnostic as to how everybody’s doing. If we can all get through it without anybody cracking or freaking out, we’re good. We’re also warmed-up, because it’s right in the middle of our comfortable ranges. If we struggle, well, you know, maybe we’ll book-out early, let Debbie lock-up the room without us hovering around.” 

Marty ducked his head, speaking to the carpet Alex had replaced months before: “You don’t have high expectations, right? We’re a seven person group in a pretty homophobic town. We’re not going to, you know, get invited to events or anything. We’re mostly going to be singing for each other, sometimes our friends and partners at our concerts. Sometimes at Christmas we go caroling, but it depends on if -- “

“On whether Wyatt and Hank Long are drunk?” Alex inserted with a smile.

Michael cocked his head and asked: “You from here?”

“No, I moved around a lot growing-up, but we were never stationed here. I just like to know who the town homophobes are and the Long Brothers stick out like sore rednecks.”

“You said you’re in the Air Force?”

“Yeah, it’s been 10 years.”

“I’ve been here since I aged out; I run the robotics club at the local high school,” Michael said, “working during the day over at Sanders’ yard.”

“You must be good with your hands,” Alex said and then at Marty’s smirk immediately wanted to yeet himself into the atmosphere.

But Michael had caught it and was grinning too: “That I am. The only good thing I ever got from my father,” he said lightly. He paused: “You here to stay?”

“For a bit -- I’ve got an apartment. I asked to come here because it’s where my father’s last posting. It’s where he’s buried -- heart attack.”

Michael’s voice was matter-of-fact: “Fathers are rough.”

Alex nodded. Marty glanced at his phone and began packing-up the red binder again. 

Alex turned to him: “I’d love to join-up if you’ll have me. What time are rehearsals?”

“We’d love to have you. We meet 6-8pm on Saturdays.”

“Ok. I have a weekly Saturday afternoon appointment -- but I can move it earlier.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. He won’t mind.”

Alex let his jaw tense-up. He heard a stomp on the stairs and Marty hurried to snap the score back into the binder.

“We’re heading-up Debbie!”   
  
“Alex, I’ve got to lock-up!”   
  
“Alright Debbie! I’ll lock the back door on the way out.”   
  
Marty nodded and headed for the stairs. Alex hung back to give Michael a chance to get ahead of him. But Michael lagged behind, shoving his hands deep in his jean pockets.

He filled the suddenly quiet air: “So, you sang in the Air Force?”

“Yeah, whenever they had choirs or bands or whatever on my bases. I didn’t join to be a musician. I’m a programmer.”

Michael’s face lit up and Alex was feeling light-headed. His grin was infectious and teasing when he asked: “What’s your favorite language?”  
  
“Oh, I -- I’m mostly working in military languages. But I’ve taken some civilian ones. It’s kind of weird to say it, but Java.”

“Me too! I just, I love type-safety. Right? I mean -- things should be type safe. It’s what I use with my robotics kids too, or a variant that’s close enough for government work.“

Alex felt his cheeks begin to tingle, he’d been grinning so hard with muscles grown unfamiliar with the shape of smiles: “Python drives me nuts.”

Michael nodded, shifting his weight. 

Alex hadn’t moved.

Michael glanced up at him under his eyelashes: “Sorry, I thought you were heading-up?”

_ Caught _ . 

He said: “Yeah. I’m --”

He could hide it most of the time, but on stairs, it was hard, because the leg was heavy. He didn’t want -- he loved it when people were impressed with his voice. It was his calling-card on every new base. Friends, colleagues, admiration -- and the leg was like the opposite. It brought pity and stares and separation from other people.

He took a breath. If he was going to lose Michael over this, he would rather lose him now.

“I had to leave active duty because I lost my leg.”

Michael froze, glancing between his two legs. 

Alex leaned down to rap his knuckles on where his right shin should be, grimly wondering if he could tune the ringing metal to a particular note.  _ My very own tuning fork. _

“Stairs are hard?” Michael murmured.

Alex nodded: “I can get up them. It’s not much more painful than what I’ve been doing all day. It’s just -- awkward.“

He took a breath, filling his belly with it. He heard himself say, voice much more frustrated than he usually let himself sound: “It’s the pity, you know? Makes you feel like you’re nothing.”

Michael’s voice was matter-of-fact: “Well, you’re a beautiful singer, and if you’re helping out at this church, you’re probably a pretty good guy too. For all Debbie’s endorsement doesn’t really mean that much to me, but -- do you want me to go up ahead of you, do you not want me to see?”

“No, it’s fine, I don’t -- just don’t try to help me, ok?”

Michael shook his head, a small smile working across his face. “I don’t take you for a damsel in distress.”

Alex returned the smile.

They walked to the stairs together, Alex hitting the light switch to turn-off the basement lights on reflex. The quiet blues, purples, and greys that filtered through the stained glass window directly above the stairs were more than enough illumination for him, but it meant as they began to walk towards the light, he and Michael shared the quiet dark of the narrow stairs, their breathing even and sharing a rhythm.

At the top of the steps, Alex turned to lock-up at the back door and Michael said: “It was good to meet you. See you next Saturday?”

Alex nodded and started to head towards the sacristy. A part of Alex wanted to look behind him, to watch Michael leave under that blazing afternoon sunlight. But he kept his eyes forward, his hands steady as he locked the sanctuary from the outside.

\--

**August 23, 2020 [80 Days Until the General Election]**

Alex got introduced to everyone at the next rehearsal. Maria and Liz were high school best friends. Liz had just come back from 11 years away, first college, medical and graduate school. She’d come back to care for her father, Mr Ortecho, who was ill. She was fun and mean and funny with a warm, soft alto. He liked the way she syncopated on the off beats by tapping her toes. She identified as bi but was “taking a break from dating to get to know myself better.”

Maria managed the divier of the two major watering holes in town, the Wild Pony. She had perfectly coifed hair and dark, bright eyes. She struggled with the higher notes and liked to stay down in her deeper range. The way Michael interacted with her made Alex shiver inside a little, a mix of flirting and sibling teasing, telling him if they hadn’t fucked, they had both certainly thought about it. 

Kyle was a surgeon, and had been, as far as Alex could tell from Michael’s not particularly thinly veiled assertions, a complete and total asshole in high school. It literally came up in every single rehearsal, rain or shine: Kyle Valenti had been an asshole. He was also bi, dating a pediatric internist doctor working in Navajoland named Peter.

Rosa Ortecho was Liz’s sister, aro and bi, with a quiet,  _ seen it all, done it all, too wise to try most of it again _ look to her. She had a smart smile, a high, clear soprano, and too many tattoos for Alex to politely count. It was something special, hearing her riff through the runs when sang the solo in the warm-up, it was -- incredible. She was a social worker at the high school, helping kids in the system, getting them the kind of resources and support Alex had heard about in after school specials but never really expected to see for himself.

Then there was Marty, a tenor who taught Hebrew school school on Saturdays before rehearsal. Quiet and grey haired, he had his partner had been together before, during, and after DOMA. Alex suspected they had some kind of enamel pin collecting habit because he always had one, usually rainbow, usually discrete but clearly well cared for, sticking out of his jacket pocket.

Maria’s Mom Mimi was in the choir, a wavery woman. She clearly was declining in some parts of her life, but when she heard the music, she sprang into action, her clear, her heavily vibrato-ed alto filling the small space. It was the kind of voice people stopped what they were doing to listen to more closely, the kind of voice who left people wondering what they could do to sound like that, to bring the feeling of the world back down to earth.

Maria had said, in a quiet moment, that the music gave her Mom structure. As she’d faded away from some parts of her life, the music -- the regular rehearsals, the structure of the beats and measures and keys, the ways she and Maria could work together to practice, it was all of it. She was a lesbian, though she probably wouldn’t be dating anyone for a good long while now.

After rehearsal, Marty’s partner had come up to pick him up when his truck was in the shop; the older man’s kippah had been in nice, rainbow colors and he’d really enjoyed getting to tell Alex about his succulent collection. “You have to keep them out of the sun, or else they’ll sunburn. You have to be careful, give them what they need to grow.”

Alex had shown him the now drooping peonies and he’d smiled: “Sometimes it’s worth it, planting something in hostile ground, just to see it bloom while it can. They’ll make the soil better for the next ones to come.”

Alex had nodded, and gone to get the watering can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like it! Comments are life, so please let me know what you think! I kind of let my own opera background loose in this, so if I'm using words or concepts that aren't clear, please let me know and I'll clarify in the next chapter or in the comments.
> 
> If there are any other singers out there reading this, I'd love to nerd out about singing stuff with you in the comments!


	3. above earth’s lamentations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter touches on some canonical child abuse as well as a discussion of churches as not-friendly places for a lot of queer folks, so take care of yourselves my smarties.
> 
> I wanted to say: I know by basing this in a church I'm possibly bringing up some strong feelings. I have a lot of mixed feelings about church, though I'm currently attending one, I've spent long years living in cities where my sect did not welcome people like me. If there are tags folks would like me to add, or questions I can answer in the comments, I want to help.
> 
> Also, there won't be any complex theology in this piece. I focus on the best parts of church for me, which are singing and gardening and community. I also touch on the bad parts, like queerphobes and abusive people. So whether you belong to another faith or tradition, church is a major part of your life, or like most of my friends you don't participate in formal religion, I want you to know I'm ok with you nope-ing out either because it's too secular or too religious or not your brand; and I want to make sure I provide the tags/context you need to let you make an informed choice.
> 
> Ok, on to the story!

**August 23, 2020 [73 Days Until the General Election]**

They were prepping for the first concert of the season, a quick Labor Day set for their friends and family. After the second week, Debbie just left as soon as Marty arrived, commanding Alex to lock-up. Everyone in the choir’s shoulders ratcheted down about 3 inches when they heard her truck rumble away.

Marty asked Alex to stay after rehearsal to practice the descant for  _ “ _ How Can I Keep from Singing” for the performance --  _ “Since everyone else has already had that solo by this point, it’s your turn,”  _ \-- and Michael had hung back, to keep him company. Marty had plopped a book bag full of paper onto one of the flimsy folding tables set-up for performance binder prep, saying:  
  
“I’ve printed out all the programs for next next Friday; if you’re going to hover, you can do it while being useful.”

He turned to Alex and played the first chord; Alex started on the descant before glancing over at Michael. He saw him pull out the program and freeze, eyes widening bigger and bigger until Alex stopped singing and asked over the piano:   
  
“Michael, you ok?”   
  
When he looked up, his face was raw and terrified. 

He managed to keep his voice even: “Alex, can you take 5? I have something I need to speak with Marty about.”

Alex nodded, burying his discomfort in taking the stairs to go and check on some of the plants Marty's partner had suggested he put in in the side yard earlier in the day after his visit to the grave. The brisk late summer wind was tipping the little plants them on their sides, and he spent a few quiet moments pushing their bases carefully and firmly into the ground. When his internal clock told him he’d been gone for 7 minutes, he stood, brushing fine red dirt off of his knees, and stepped into the sanctuary.

Alex heard the argument as he walked across the sanctuary. It was Michael’s voice he heard first, raised and tense. He could barely hear Marty. He paused at the top of the stairs, hand on the rail. He wasn’t meaning to eavesdrop, but he also didn’t want to interrupt.

He heard: “I don’t know why I have to keep repeating myself -- you can’t put me in the program, Marty!”  
  
“Michael --”

“It doesn’t -- look, when I joined, I said I would love to sing with you. I would sing in public. But I can’t be in the program.”   
  
“Michael,” he said wearily, “There are  _ eight total people in the group _ . Counting me! You are the only worthwhile mechanic in the town. People are going to know who you are.”  


“It can’t be written down! It can’t be on Facebook --”

“Michael, I don’t get what the problem is --”

“I _can’t_ , ok?”

“Are you not out or --”

“I’m as out as I’m going to -- I’m  _ out _ ! I don’t paint my fingernails rainbow, or fly bisexual pride flags over the junk yard, but the people who need to know know, and if anybody asks, I tell.”

Alex felt a chill; he wondered if that was directed at him. He glanced down at his nails: he had considered painting them rainbow. But, he didn’t know where to buy good nail polish around here. 

“Fine,” Marty said. “I printed them at home; it took me a whole ream of paper. It killed a toner cartridge --”

“Look, is this about  _ toner _ ? Seriously? Fine. I will print them and I will fold them.” Michael’s voice was taught.

“Fine.”

Alex stepped onto the stairs and their voices hushed down again.

Once he made it to the bottom, he asked: “Everything ok?” 

Marty snatched his tote bag of now contraband programs and grumbled his way to the stairs, calling out over his shoulder: “ _ And  _ you can drive drop them off with Debbie tomorrow before the service!”   
  
As Marty galumphed up the stairs, Michael asked: “How much did you hear?”

“Enough.” 

Michael made firm eye-contact with his boots. Alex asked, voice even and kind: “Why didn’t you want to be in the program? Are you two-timing us with some group that can regularly hit their high E-flats?” 

Michael tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“No, I don’t -- it’s just --"  
  
A look of such stress moved over his face that Alex stepped into his space and put his hands on his shoulders: “Hey, hey, you don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s -- I didn’t tell anybody here, because I don’t -- “ He rubbed his hands through his curls, making them stick out wildly, “I don’t know why -- I  _ should _ be able to tell my friends --”

He looked up the stairs, looked at Alex, and squared his shoulders, seeming to make a decision.

“I’m undocumented.”

Alex paused. 

“Ok?”

Michael frowned, shifting his weight but not moving way: “I’m undocumented. My parents brought me here from Brazil when I was little, and then died. Then I was in foster care and that was supposed to resolve it, but it never, ever actually seemed to. I got my license through a buddy’s sosh, but I’m mostly paid under the table because I don’t like messing with other people’s identities. The high school looks the other way for the robotics club because, well, I know all the teachers because I went there. But -- I’m just trying to keep under the radar --”

“Hey, hey, I get it. I joined before don’t ask don’t tell was repealed. I know from secrets.”

Michael nodded tightly, and Alex tried to keep his voice reasonable: “But what would happen if your name was on the program?”

“I don’t  _ know,”  _ Michael said, leaning his weight against Alex's palms, seeking warmth, “I don’t know how ICE works; it’s not like they have a ‘Guide to Not Getting Deported.’ But, what would I even do in Brazil? I don’t speak Portuguese -- I don’t --”

“Hey, hey,” Alex said, rubbing his thumbs across the ball of Michael’s shoulder, “I know there’s nothing I can do to help, but if you need anybody to have your back, with Marty or whatever, let me know.”

A small smile flickered across Michael’s lips: “I thought Airmen were all law-abiding and stuff?”

Alex said: “You think this queer, once-and-future goth, hacker has a problem with you not having some papers in order? I don’t think so.”

Michael smiled for real this time. 

Alex grinned, trying to break the tension.

“And hey. Church is supposed to be a sanctuary, right? You should be safe here.”

Michael faced grimaced: “Have you not spent a lot of time around churches as a queer person?”

Alex shrugged his shoulders: “The first church I remember singing in, my Mom took us. We were there for 4 years in Palo Alto, CA and we never had a priest who wasn’t queer or a woman or both. After that, in Florida and then Colorado, you know, not so much the case. But it kind of set my understanding of what to expect. I never really grew out of it.”

Michael shook his head, rolling his sleeve up, turning his arm over in the scant space between their bodies. There was a burn that look suspiciously --

“ _Ow_ ,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Michael said. “I used to have these temper tantrums when I was a kid? Some kind trauma response. I’d throw things around a lot. One of the families I lived with was religious, decided to exorcise the demons out of me, with the help of a --” he took a breath, “a local padre.”

“No one from here, right?” Alex said, the threat clear in his voice and something settled in Michael’s shoulders. 

“No, this was in Albuquerque.”

Alex worked his jaw: “Give me their name and they’ll never be able to rent a car again.”

Michael choked with laughing, cocking his head and letting a smile break through: “What a weird threat?”

Alex shrugged his shoulders: “Spending your entire life unable to rent cars, it’s one kind of punishment." He explained: "It’s really easy to hack into the AVIS and Hertz database and change their file to ‘Known Drunk Driver.’ Harder to do other stuff, but you know, keep telling me stories about your childhood trauma. We’ll see what they earn.”

Michael laughed and took a tiny step forward. He laid his forehead on Alex’s shoulder and Alex felt his rush of warmth. The church was quiet above them, the stained glass throwing patterns down the steps.

Alex’s whispered: “Thanks for telling me --”

“You can’t tell anyone --” Michael said gruffly, meeting his eyes but not pulling away, “It’s not the kind of secret you can share.”

“Michael, I know from secrets. I would never --”

“Ok,” Michael said, almost too quickly, too quick to trust, to quick to try to escape. Alex felt something flare in his chest. 

He took a breath: “Want to go over that descant one more time?”   
  
“Sure,” Alex said, then tried to switch the tone, slowing lowering his hands. “You know just because I’m a tenor doesn’t mean I should keep getting all these lead parts. We can rewrite them, move them down a half-octave.”

Michael chucked: “You’re not getting the descants because you’re a tenor, Alex. You’re getting them because you have the best voice among us.”

Alex shook his head: “No, that’s not --”

“Take a compliment, Manes,” he said and Alex -- paused.

“Alright,” Alex said.

Michael stepped back and slid between the bench and the piano, resting his hands on the keyboard.

“Ready?” He asked.

And Alex nodded.

As he sang, he thought about what Michael had told him. He didn’t know how ICE worked either, didn’t know how scared he should be, how secretive Michael would have to be; what it meant for the tiny seeds of deeply rooted feelings he could just see blushing above the rich earth. He knew he was falling, hard, but he didn’t know what this all meant.

It probably meant he should do some research.

Marty had been right, he had been fine with the descant. He and Michael went up the stairs a few minutes later, Michael in front of him, feet tapping out the same tempo on the steps.

They walked each other to their respective cars, and Michael paused, eyes roving everywhere in the parking lot except for Alex’s face.

“Hey,” he started, and Alex was already saying -- “Yes?”

“Oh,” Michael said, ducking his eyes down to the cracked asphalt.

“It’s just -- Marty didn’t remember to go over the dress code. White button up, black slacks, black shoes, black socks. And, uh, a black binder.”

“I’ve got the music memorized --”

“Yeah, but Maria doesn’t. So we’ll all be carrying them to hide her eternal shame,”

And there it was, back after it fled the tight words in the basement, Michael’s smirking sense of humor.

Alex caught himself breathing, just for a moment, like a regular person, high in his chest. It made his head rocket and spin. The thing was - the thing was, Michael didn’t read as queer. Maybe it was because Latinx people were often left out of definitions of queerness or maybe it was the butch facade, but Alex forgot for whole entire sentences that Michael was as bi as King David.

So he kept rediscovering, moment after moment, rehearsal after rehearsal, how very, very much this meant to him, that Michael was one of his team, one of his kind.

“If you want, I could help you print the programs?”

Michael shook his head: “I’ve got it covered -- are _you_ ok having your name in it?”

Alex nodded: “My Dad is dead and my eldest brother is at a base in Texas, so the likelihood of it causing a shitstorm is limited.”

“Got it,” Michael said, with a small smile. Then he straightened his shoulders: “I’ll see you at the next rehearsal, ok?”

“Ok,” Alex said, watching him walk the long meters to his truck and drive away, trying the whole time, to remember how to breathe.


	4. I hear the real, though far off hymn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly pure, uncut wish fulfillment.

**September 4, 2020 [60 Days Until the General Election]**

The thing was, there wasn’t really a backstage to a church. There wasn’t really a stage at all at King David's, except the slightly elevated, red carpeted place where the altar was now tucked back against the wall for the Queer Choir of Roswell's Friday night, Labor Day Weekend concert. Alex and Michael were on their hands-and-knees beside the altar, using gaffer tape to tape down the final wires to the mics. Alex had a strong aversion to wireless mics, having seen them fail almost 100% of the time he had used them. So they had 3 wired mics up in front to ensure they were all able to be heard by as many people as came out. Marty was at the church door, getting ready to open as they finished up.

Alex was balancing on his knee, Michael beside him smoothing down the tape to make sure nobody would trip when he heard Marty open the church door.

Alex glanced up to see who it was and felt his breath punch out of his chest like he’d been hit unbraced in the chest by a 2x4; and he’d know. He ducked his head down, hoping his brother couldn’t see him over the pews.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he heard himself say, hands crawling into fists on the carpet.

“You staple yourself?” Michael asked, leaning over.

“No,” Alex said, voice colorless with tension, and then found he couldn’t say it. _Shit_.

He got one finger up off the floor and waved it towards the entrance.

Michael popped his head up: “You know that guy?” 

Alex held back a whine, but only barely. _Shit, of all the fucking times to have a fucking panic attack._

He held his jaw tight, dug his nails into his palm, and said: “That would be Sergeant Harlan Manes,” hearing his voice as flat and dry as the red earth outside of the church, “My eldest brother.”

And Michael froze at his tone. Then something rippled up his body, like if he had hackles they would be raising. 

“Want me to make him leave?”

“No, no,” Alex said, he pulled in a breath in through his nose, out through his mouth, “What’s he doing?”

Michael popped up again, then came back down to where Alex crouched: “He’s chatting with Marty at the back,” Michael said, voice steady.

“Is he coming this way —”

”Look, I’ll distract him, you can get down to the basement, get out through the backdoor, something —”

“ _No_ , I’m not going to let him run me off. This is _my_ group.”

“Shit, Alex, I don’t know if you can —”

He hissed: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

“Oh-kay, how about I distract him for a bit, and you can go get ready to face him,” Michael paused, reaching carefully over to place two gentle fingers on the back of Alex’s fist. “Get some armor on.”

Alex barely jerked a nod. Then Michael stood up, baritone ringing out brassily, hand extended, “Sergeant Manes, are you our Alex’s brother?”

Alex’s hearing fuzzed out at hearing his brother’s voice replying. When he glanced up, Michael's shoulders were blocking his view of Sergeant Manes, and he pressed down the very last piece of tape and stood, his head bowed, his cane painful evidence, and staggered his way to the basement stairs.

He made it down and thank God, nobody else in the choir knew him well enough to tell he was absolutely freaked out. He took a couple of deep breaths.

 _I wonder what Michael had meant by armor_?

He looked over where Maria had set-up a folding table with a big mirror and an array of make-up laid across it, and thought: _Armor._

_\--_

The Alex Manes that emerged with the rest of the choir, Michael striding beside him, had his shoulders back, his head straight forward, and his eyes fully lined with dark navy eyeliner. Out of his peripheral vision, he caught the Sergeant sitting front and center, his hands fisted on his knees, careful not to touch anything or anyone around him, especially not someone who looked like a delighted Mr Ortecho on the pew beside him. And he was staring. Alex could feel him staring. Alex’s step hitched and Michael murmur: “You think it will fucking kill him to watch us have fun up here and sing?”

Alex said under his breath: “I hope he has fucking heart attack like Dad.”

Michael quirked a grin, under his cowboy hat, whispering as Marty waved them into place: “We can only hope.”

They sang their 30 minute program to the three dozen friends who came out, Mr Ortecho leading the clapping with a big, loving grin as the Sergeant tried to drill a hole in Alex’s head with his glare. Marty had sprung for a cheese platter from Ralph’s and Tony, the priest-in-charge, had brought a bottle of wine that he kept telling everyone was non-sacramental.

Michael stuck to Alex’s side like a burr from the moment the clapping finished, peppering him with questions about lieder and famous tenors and anything else he could think of to distract him from the Sergeant's slow circling path closer to him through the dwindling crowd. Alex kept waiting to be irritated; but mostly, he was just grateful to have someone to focus on who was not a tenured resident of his nightmares.

Then the Sergeant was standing in front of him, uniform crisp and eyes a terror, his hands empty of any shared food.

“Captain Manes,” he said. 

Alex nodded and was glad he could nod: “Sergeant.”

He could feel Michael stiffen beside him, saw him put down his paper plate so his hands were free.

There was a barb-filled silence. Alex broke it: “You came to visit the grave?”

Something flinched across the Sergeant’s face: “You haven’t been keeping it up.”

Alex narrowed his eyes: “I’m visiting every Saturday.”

“The grave looks like shit, Alex. And what the fuck is with that headstone, when you said you would handle it, Forrest, Flint and I didn’t think you were going to tell lies about Dad.”

Alex shrugged one laconic shoulder: “It’s not wrong, is it?”

The Sergeant’s eyes flared at the lazy gesture and flipped tactics, shoving forward, deep into Alex’s space before he could retreat, hissing: “Dad would be ashamed -- _you_ should be ashamed to be seen singing with these fags --”

Alex tried to jerk back but Harlan snapped out a hand, gripping his shoulder as Alex’s whole body flinched away and he fought it, fought not to appear scared, to keep his face neutral -- he tried to command his hands to break the grip. But before he’d drawn another breath, Michael had ducked under the Sergeant's arm and was now inches from his face.

“How’d you like the show, Sergeant?” he said in what could pass as a friendly, disinterested tone if they couldn’t see how his entire back had turned to hard, unyielding lines. The Sergeant’s grip loosened and finally his cold fingers slipped off of Alex’s shoulder as he gave ground to the taller man. Alex took a breath.

Out of his graying peripheral vision, Alex saw Maria start to make her way over to them. 

Michael kept talking, voice rumbling down into a low growl: “I liked our theme song best, the one where Alex sang the ‘Amazing Grace’ descant. He’s great, isn’t he? There are a lot of versions of that hymn. You’ve probably even sung a few if you went to the same churches as Alex. We’ve been singing it together since before Obergefell in 2015; heck, Mimi’s been singing in the Queer Choir before Lawrence vs Texas in 2003. But we’ve always sung this version, the one with the line,” he sang it, “ _‘When love by shame is undefiled, how can I keep from singing?’_ ” 

Alex heard Maria’s voice cut in, low and strong, her strong shoulder pressing against Michael, forming a wall: “That’s not the line in the music, or any of the other versions. We’re the only ones that sing it that way." She hitched her hip, "Maybe in the big cities, people seem to have forgotten about that. That we were taught to be ashamed of our love. That it was corrosive and predatory and toxic and cruel and tragic. That _we_ were broken and stupid and half-hearted. That our love was so, so much less than straight love. And the thing is -- it’s not. It’s not and we know that, anyone who's ever been in love knows it.”

Alex heard Mimi’s voice, coming to stand beside Maria: “But it’s more than that. It’s about the idea that shame doesn’t just dim love or make it inferior. It’s a reminder that shame defiles love, that teaching an entire group of people from childhood to connect love and shame in that causal way, is like desecrating a corpse. It’s a defilement. It’s _evil_ to make people ashamed of who they love.”

Marty’s voice cut in, firm, precise: “That’s why we sing that song at every warm-up. It reminds us that we love singing, that we are cured by it, and that shame has no place in our loves, no place in the lives we aspire to live. We have a lot to work on as people, everybody does, but we can build the world to be a better place, if we don’t waste our time on shame.”

There was a pause, and Alex could imagine Harlan turning redder and redder and redder, until Michael leaned down that little bit, right into his face: “So if you have a problem with it, you can leave.”

Rosa snapped out, Mr Ortecho at her back: “You _should_ leave. Before we make you.”

And there was a long, tense moment, before Alex heard Harlan turn and stalk down the red church carpet to the big wooden doors, Kyle shadowing him him out. The choir turned, Liz keeping an eye on the door, the few friends still at the reception looking on.

Michael looked apologetic, voice quiet: “Sorry, Alex, I should have asked if you wanted help. He just, that _word_ ,” his jaw ticked and he clenched his hands before Mimi patted his shoulder.

Alex looked between all of them, voice shaking as he looked down: “I wouldn’t have been able to find words. My brain just shuts down. Just like it was before my Dad died.”

Michael's eyes were close and Alex, he couldn't remember the last time someone had looked at him with that protective glint. Couldn't remember the last time he felt protected.

Michael said, voice quiet: "We're going to stay until we're sure he's gone."

“You don’t have to --” Alex started.

Maria shook her head: “We watch out for each other. He's not the first and won't be the last. But we're here.”

Marty nodded: “And we're not going anywhere.”

Alex tried to find words to thank them, tried to smile, but everything was held like broken glass inside, like he couldn't move in a soft direction without cutting himself to pieces, so he said: "Alright, do you want to help me take down the mics?"

Michael smiled, eyes still worried: "Sure, Alex."

So the entire choir disassembled the tape complex on the floor, moved the altar, swept the crumb from the cheese and crackers, and when Kyle confirmed Harlan had stormed off in his F-250, Michael walked Alex to his truck, going at his pace, not helping, but never, never leaving his side.


	5. that hails a new creation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section involves a discussion of whether a choir which is not mainly African American can sing gospel. I'm white and have had this conversation just about every time my choirs -- majority Asian American for the most part, though sometimes majority white -- have sung gospel music. Music and race and class and gender all intermix in complicated ways and the discussion and resolution the characters have here isn't the only way this can or should go; as always, I'm happy to dig into it in the comments if folks have questions or concerns!
> 
> Also, Alex is an unreliable narrator of his own life and is Not So Well Adjusted. But he's working on it!

**September 5th, 2020 [59 Days to the General Election]**

Alex headed to the graveyard early the next morning; there was no way Harlan would brave the dawn to be there and he didn’t want to risk another confrontation. After, he planned to spend the rest of the day at the church, planting some peas on the western wall and clearing-up from the concert the night before.

He stepped out of the jeep, feet crunching on the cold, dry earth. He held his words inside until he was at the gravesite.

“It’s ugly, what you made me,” he told the headstone. He sat on the ground. Nothing much was growing on the grave at all, but particularly not here, where he sat every week.

“You made me ugly inside, Dad. You made me afraid. Michael and the others protected me last night more than you did for my entire life. I was 22 before learned how to be hugged. I still can’t stand it most of the time, it’s why I run the AV, so I don’t have to pass the Peace.”

Sometimes Alex wished he’d been hit more. It would explain how warped he was. How terrified, how un-normal things had been in his childhood. But it had been -- maybe 5 times? His whole life? A few whippings with cherry switches, and once with Harlan’s help and that two-by-four. After that, all it took was a dish set too hard on the table; the swerve of a truck during an argument; the sound of footsteps in a childhood hallway; a hand on his shoulder. He’d wrapped his entire life around protecting himself, he’d wrapped his entire life around his father and brother’s whims, around protecting himself from repeats.

“I had to learn from scratch what a kind touch was; what a gentle word sounded like; how to tell people how I wanted to be touched. I had to learn that from casual lovers and quick fucks. But I learned it, Dad. I learned that some people will fight for me, even if they don’t really know me. Know how messed-up I am. Some people choose to protect each other. Fuck you for never teaching me that and fuck you for being such a bad father. And fuck Harlan too, for turning into you. Fuck you both.”

And Alex turned on his heel and went to his jeep, body tight, arms wrapped around his stomach in the cold, clear air.

\--

The rehearsal had barely started that night when Michael raised his hand, looking down they'd been sight-singing for the next concert: “I don’t think we can do this song justice.”

The room paused, looking at him. 

Rosa said: ”What?”

“I don’t think we can sing 'By an' By,'" I don’t think we have the right swing for it. Except Maria and Mimi, but they can’t carry everyone.”

Maria had been trying to hide her grin, but Mimi beat her to it: “You all _are_ sounding pretty high church; Michael’s right, you should go hear how it’s really done.”

Maria nodded: “It’s more fun when you get the spirit of it right, and without growing up in a black church, I wouldn’t expect you to know how.”

Marty narrowed his eyes at Michael: “I wasn’t going to have us sing it straight --”

Michael jumped in: “But do you know how to teach it right? Have _you_ sung in a gospel choir before?”

Marty looked like he was gearing up for a fight and Alex broke-in and said: “We can figure it out, and we should. One time I was in Hungary and we were doing a military choir exchange, a shared concert. We’d learned this Hungarian folk song. They had learned a gospel song. But they had, you know, no black people. And no understanding of what gospel is supposed to sound like. And sure, I’m sure we sounded terrible to them too, but they sat there,” and he delicately folded his hands in front of his sternum, fingers clasped, and sang in the straightest tone possible, lips pursed, eyebrows raised: _“Good news, chariot is coming, good news, chariot is coming, good news, chariot is coming, good news, chariot is coming and I don’t want to see me again,_ ” over-articulating each word.

He paused, wondering if he sounded like he was making fun of their accents, so he rushed on: “I'm sure we sounded even worse in Hungarian, but the thing is, we're _from_ the country gospel is from, so we should figure out how to do better.”

“Ok, Alex,” Marty said, aggrieved, “How do you propose we do that?”

Alex glanced at Maria and said: “There’s an AME church in Albuquerque that did a concert here a few months ago, right?" She shrugged, and he kept going, "I ran the AV for it. Maybe some of us could go, get a reminder of how good gospel sounds like live? They probably have a 10:30 service and a 24 person choir next-next Sunday. I’m not sure if any of you are into church, but that’s generally where gospel is sung.”

Everyone looked at him blankly. It was the most he’d talked since he joined the choir.

Alex felt like his skin was melting off. 

“I can go and I can record it if it’s helpful,” Alex muttered, “See if their director would be interested in coming by, giving any advice?”

“Aren’t they going to miss you here?” Michael said.

“I can just go to the 8 o’clock service.”

“Two church services in one day?” said Maria, groomed brows arched.

Alex shrugged: “Sometimes I have to go to every church service to run the AV when Deb is out. Two English services in the morning and a Spanish service in the evening. It’s not really participating in church when I’m the one running lights and sound from the back.”

They seemed to take that at face value.

“Anyways, I’ll send the info to the Discord group, if anyone wants a ride, let me know.”

Marty nodded and said: "Ok, now can we please try our best with what we know now?"

Alex ducked his head but caught Michael's grin as it disappeared behind his sheet music.

#

When he got back home after rehearsal, he took his leg off, sighing at the feeling of air on his stump. He from his bed with a soft red quilt slopped across the top, he opened up Discord on his laptop and saw a DM from Michael:

> Michael: Do I have to wear a big hat?
> 
> Alex: What?
> 
> Michael: Is that racist? I thought people wore big hats when they went to black churches.
> 
> Alex: I don’t think I’m the arbiter of what’s racist or not, Michael; I don’t think you are either. But no, I don’t think there’s a specific dress requirement. Just wear church clothes.

Alex furrowed his brow, typing:

> Alex: do want me to come over, I can help you pick some out?
> 
> Michael: You trying to get me undressed?

Alex flopped on his back in his bed, grinning like a crazy person.

He’d flirted! He really had! Even if he failed at any other form of interaction, he could know he had successfully flirted with one Michael Guerin this week. A+ to him.

By then he’d spent too long gloating and now Michael was worried.

> Michael: Hey, sorry, I wasn’t trying to push --
> 
> Alex replied: Yes.
> 
> Alex: I mean, not immediately
> 
> Alex: obvs
> 
> Alex: But I like your voice. I like
> 
> Alex: you
> 
> Alex: But you don’t have to go to church jus to hang out with me, we could 
> 
> Michael: yes
> 
> Michael: whatever it is you’re about to propose, the answer’s yes
> 
> Alex: Ok, you maybe want to get dinner at Crashdown tonight?
> 
> Michael’s reply was instant: See you at 6?
> 
> Alex: 👍

Then he immediately fell into a spiral of what he was supposed to wear, tearing his closet apart with his crutch under his arm, trying to find his one and only cute shirt.

\--

Alex ended-up wearing a black light-weight cotton button down, the nicest jeans he could find clean on this short notice, and well, the only shoes he could wear. _Seriously, fuck prosthetic designers and their need for absurdly functional footwear._ He wanted to wear something cute occasionally and it was an option 0% of the time. So: practical shoes, nice jeans, button-up shirt. Some part of him wanted to wear rings; the last time he’d flirted with intent was when he was 17. He had no --

But before the spiral started, he got a text from Michael:

> Michael: I’m trying out my church outfit on you tonight. Don’t assume this is how I dress
> 
> Alex: I know how you dress. We’ve been singing together for a month.
> 
> Michael: I guess

Alex could almost hear the surly tone and he caught himself smiling in the rearview mirror on the short drive to the Crashdown Cafe, which Mr Ortecho kept open until midnight on Saturdays to help people soak up some of the alcohol from the bars.

Alex opened the door to the cafe with the jingle of bells and Michael waved him over to the booth in the back corner.

Maria was sitting with him and Alex paused. He’d thought it was a _date_ , not a friend hang-out --

She stood-up, eyes full of mischief: “Just keeping your boy company!”

“He’s not my --” 

But she was already gone.

Michael’s cheeks were high and flushed: “Don’t mind her. She’s just -- overprotective.”

“I don’t think that’s overprotective. She might as well have plated and plattered you and it would have been less subtle --” 

Alex slapped a hand over his mouth, muttering through his fingers: “Sorry, sometimes the inside thoughts, they go outside.”

But Michael was already cracking-up: “Ok, so we’re both awkward. We already knew that from how you refused to do the warm-up last week -- “

“I’m not going to _meow_ in public!” Alex hissed, sitting down and looking around suspiciously.

“Will you do it in private?” Michael said.

Alex bit his lip, almost giggling: “That sounds like a date number two question.”

“So there’s going to be a second date?”

Alex paused, looking down at him: “I mean, are you going to do something that makes me not want to hang out with you? I’ve been wanting to see more of you since, I don’t know, 1 second after you started storming towards me to protect Marty. ”

Michael frowned: “I wasn’t -- yeah. I guess I was. You don’t look --” Michael paused. “There’s this, aggression about you? I mean, you don’t ring my abuser alarm. At all. But if I was at the Wild Pony and I saw you walk in the door, I would assume I wouldn’t be the only one getting into a bar fight that night.”

Alex kept his voice low so no one could hear: “So you won’t have your name in the concert program but you risk getting arrested?”  
  
Michael frowned a little, rubbing his fingers around the base of his water glass: “I never said I’m the best steward of my own safety. Especially where Wild Turkey is concerned.”

“So,” Alex said slowly, “We shouldn’t go on dates to the bar.”

Michael shook his head: “The Wild Pony isn’t really a safe place for us to go on dates. I mean, Maria runs it, it’s Mimi’s but, you know. But even Maria can’t really do much about the kind of people that live around here.”

“But Crashdown’s different,” Michael nodded, reaching over, gripping Alex’s hand for a second, looking around. “We’re in the corner, not a lot of people can see us. And Mr Ortecho has our back.”

Alex took a breath: “Do you ever think about moving, so you don’t have to live like this?”  
  
Michael nodded, voice low: “Yeah, a sanctuary city, like San José or San Francisco or Seattle.” Then Michael twisted his mouth: “I think about that, oh, every six to seven breaths.” He rolled his shoulders, “It’s bad right now, really bad. But part of me thinks that it would be kind of like painting myself rainbow, going someplace like that, making myself a target. Who would assume I would be hanging out someplace like this. Got to stay under the radar, right?’

Alex nodded: “Yeah. I’m sorry you have to deal with all this.  
  
Michael shook his head: “It is what it is.” Then Michael took a breath: “Alright, hardest question of the night.”

Alex bit his lip, twisting up a smile: “Alright. What is it?”  
  
“Palestrina or Puccini?”

“Uh, Palestrina, every day. Because normal people can sing it and it’s not super uptight all the time.”

Michael covered his mouth, mock horror moving across his face: “Well, there goes our chance at a second date. Are you saying _Dialogues of the Carmelites_ is _uptight_? It’s about a bunch of _queer nuns who die to save each other_?”

Alex paused, trying to think of a way to say this without being hurtful. He went with: “With what you told me of your background, how did you end up so into opera?”

Michael tilted his head to the side, eyes shuttering a little: ”Are you asking why a poor Brazilian foster kid likes opera?”

“Well, saying it like that I certainly sound like an asshole.”

Michael quirked a smile: “A little bit. But there was this music teacher in my middle school, she was this awesome opera singer in New York and she met this guy from the Southwest. She had this Georgia O’Keefe fantasy. I mean, she didn’t know Georgia O’Keefe was queer, she just thought -- _artists should go to New Mexico!_ So she moved out here and was like: ‘well, I guess I’ll teach kids!’ And, you know, it’s not like anyone I was living with particularly wanted me _back_ , so Ms Herstin and I would just sit in the music room after school and listen through,” he paused, closing his eyes to count: “Nearly every opera in the western canon? In about 3 years? It was our two person opera club.”

“Where was this?”

“A little speck of nowhere town. She was my very own Miss Honey.”

Alex grinner; _Matilda_ had been one of his favorite stories when he was little. The idea that there was going to be somebody someday in his life who would see him for who he was and believe he deserved to be protected had meant a lot for a long time.

Liz came by to get their orders, giving them a whole lot of face but no actual sass. They both ordered cutely-named burgers. Michael’s rare, Alex’s medium rare with extra pickles.

Once Liz left, Michael twisted his face: ” _Pickles_. I guess we’re not kissing at the end of the night --”

Alex threw his hand up to call Liz back over to change his order and Michael grabbed his arm, pulling it back down. “Oh my God, don’t, she’ll know why. Just don’t eat the pickles.”

Alex smiled, relishing the feeling on Michael’s hand on his forearm, palm hot through the black cotton of his shirt.

“Alright,” Alex said, “So, now you know my deep, dark secret. I prefer chantsong to late-19th, early-20th century opera. How about --” He paused, “If you could sing any tenor role in the canon, what would it be?”  
  
“Oooh,” Michael said, grin turning wicked, “Are you asking me to change my parts?”

Alex chuckled and Michael kept on: “I’m going to start quizzing you on your basso profundo knowledge, you just wait.”

Alex laid his hands palm-down on the table between them: ”Go for it.”

Michael looked at his hands and reached across, turning them palm-up and laying just his fingertips in the center of Alex’s palm. And Alex -- oh, oh that was a mistake, because now Alex couldn’t hear anything Michael said at all for oh, the next 15 seconds.

Then he realized Michael was looking at him expectantly, a little smile moving across his face.

“Earth to Alex, anyone receiving?”

“Copy,” Alex said, then shook his head, “I mean, sorry. Would you --”

Michael smiled, voice low: “That look you just had on your face. It’s, uh. It was pretty flattering.”

Alex ducked his head, feeling his cheeks heat: “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to --”

“Don’t be sorry for that kind of reaction, Alex,” Michael said, voice sure and filled with banked heat.

Alex cleared his throat and then winced: “I had a choir teacher who told us every time we cleared our throats we were taking 1 month off our lives as professional singers because we were ‘courting nodes.’”

Michael rolled his eyes and Alex joined him.  
  
“Yeah, it’s weird what kind of fears teachers manage to get into you.”

Michael shrugged: “Or, adults in general." He took a breath, "Going back, since you’d asked, well, if I had to sing any tenor part, it would be Porgy.”

Alex’s mouth popped open, eyes narrowing: ”That’s musical theater. Not opera.”

“George Gershwin is _absolutely_ opera! Operetta, but still, opera.”

“But, no -- ‘Summertime’ is _not_ opera!”

“Of course it is! Have you ever heard Kathleen Battles sing it? Of course it is!”  
  
Michael pulled out his phone, plugging the headphones in and untangling them but Alex waved him away.

“DM me the link? I want to listen to you, not Lady Dame Battles.”

Michael’s eyes widened but he put his phone away: “But you’re gonna to listen to it. I’ll send you the YouTube video. She’s _amazing._ ”

“I know she’s amazing. Of course she’s amazing, she’s Kathleen Battles.”

“Alright,” Michael said, “But, it’s still 100% opera.”

“I think we can agree to disagree on this one," Alex grinned.

The burgers arrived.

He didn’t eat his pickles.

They both focused on eating, but once Alex had finished his burger and was partway through his fries, he paused, taking a deep breath, trying to find words for what he’d been thinking.

“Uh oh,” Michael said, “That’s a serious look.”

“Ok,” Alex said, holding his shoulders tense and tight, trying to keep his hands relaxed on the table. “Truth time. I haven’t, like, dated? So if there’s like a rhythm, or some kind of checklist, or I don’t know, some kind of basic understanding of how this is supposed to go, can we assume I don’t have it? Uh, it’s not, lack of caring, just lack of --”

“Opportunity?” Michael supplied, voice soft.

“Yeah,” Alex said, “Not a lot of fun dates with hot basses on bases.”

Michael’s voice was quiet, gentle when he asked: “Even post Don’t Ask, Don’t tell?”

“I mean it’s not really about getting fired so much murdered that I was worried about?” Alex backtracked, “I mean, that’s not fair. There’s tons of guys who would have had my back. I just -- you know, I was an officer at that point. I was usually the only person at my rank in the area I was in, and I was supervising civilians, and I don’t like the power dynamics and I didn’t want to date people off base, I just -- “ he paused, “I just put that part of me in a box? I figured some day I would get back to it. And now I’m 27 and sitting across a diner table from a beautiful man, and I have no earthly idea what I’m doing.”

Michael grinned, moving his fingers inside of Alex’s curled palms. “I think you’re doing just fine, Alex.” He took a swig of his soda then asked: “Some easier questions. Favorite place you lived?”

“Palo Alto. You?”

“Roswell, because it’s where I got back in contact with my brother and sister.” He paused an Alex’s look, “They’d gotten adopted, but not me. Anyway, they’re rockstars. Max did a Congressional internship and he’s currently doing political work up north. Isobel worked at the local paper, and well, it’s that time of the season, so she’s doing political work up north too.”

“‘Political work’?”

Michael shook his head: ”Honestly, whatever makes them happy. It would make my skin crawl to have to interact with political people every single day.”

Alex nodded: “That’s the kind of stuff I was worried about when I enlisted; I figured it was officers’ jobs to handle the politics.”

Michael frowned: “I thought you were a captain?”

Alex felt a grin flicker across his face: “Yeah, it turns out shit rolls downhill, and if I’m an officer, I have some power to stop it from hitting other kids too stupid to realize they should grab whatever power they can get, hold onto it with two hands, and stretch it to cover as many people as possible.”

Michael got a thoughtful look: “I think you’d like Max. He talked about power that way to. Like it’s something you can use. Not just something that uses you. Spits you out. Fucks over the little guys.”

Alex could almost hear the thrumming of a struck nerve and veered off course, snatching a fry from his plate and depositing it on Michael’s “I’m not going to finish these -- can you help?”

Michael flashed him a grin like he knew what he was doing; but he ate the fry anyway.

\--

They’d parked in the spare spaces behind Crashdown, trucks right next to each other. Michael was swinging his arms as they walked, nearly whistling. Alex didn’t know if it was nerves or maybe he just usually walked down the street whistling.

Baritones were a funny breed.

“Well,” Michael said, “Here’s my stop.” He paused next to a 1950s era Ford.

“Beautiful truck,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Michael said, patting her flank, “She's home.”

Alex frowned and Michael hurried:

“Not that way. Any more. For a while, sure. But now I live over in an Airstream on Sanders’ property.”

Alex’s eyes flared a little bit: “Airstreams are so cool. I always loved the idea that you could have a house and then like if you didn’t want to be someplace anymore, you could just hitch it to your truck and move on.”

Michael smiled: “Me too.”

They were facing each other in the space between two small trucks, the heavy metal bodies dulling the sound of the night around them.

Their shoulders were nearly touching.

Alex screwed his courage to the sticking place and said: “So, I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Yeah?” Michael murmured, easing closer, smile working across his face. “Am I always going to have notice?”

“Do you want notice?”

“I’m not a big fan of surprises, but for you Captain Manes, I’d make an exception.”

And Alex leaned up and pressed his lips to Michael’s warm mouth. He was -- every single thing about him was more wonderful this up close. He was warmer, closer; he smelled better. Alex knew he didn’t taste of pickles. Michael’s hand came to rest gently on his hip and Alex made a small noise and pressed that little bit closer, his body going flush against Michael’s. He pulled back, after a second.

“So, what do you want to do tomorrow?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are some examples of "By an' By" sung, so to speak, straight, that is, not pushing or swinging the notes for emphasis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHfT0d_mNgc or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e7-R-gmJQU or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PREmucJn1sY or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XkiYZ4X3F8
> 
> How I've been taught is that both gospel and folk music are best understood and performed with more emphasis than just treating every note on the page as if we have to sing it for exactly its value to the millisecond with no flexibility. It's one of the reasons I love gospel and folk: they give more room for emotional connection and emphasis than most high social class opera.
> 
> So, more like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCzDoZ7llgA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QUjGkODpcA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVFfEVGloE8
> 
> In looking for these, it seems like this is a gospel song most often recorded by white choral groups, while many other gospel songs get better coverage from a wider range of groups. It's weird how culture moves and flows between communities!
> 
> Also, Alex's Hungary story is my story from a choir exchange in 2005. Here is what "Good News, the Chariot's Coming" should sound like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GZtqtirq1o
> 
> Here is my favorite scene from Dialogues of the Carmelites (I'm with Michael -- Puccini all the way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM0mTp9SeP0
> 
> Here's what Alex was talking about when it comes to Palestrina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3v9unphfi0. My beef with Palestrina comes from my half-remembered music history lesson about how he wrote all these beautiful love songs and then repudiated them later in life because he thought music shouldn't praise people, just God. 
> 
> Here is Dame Battles singing "Summertime" as it was meant to be sung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRnQ-fyQldE


	6. above the tumult and the strife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm recording the songs I mention in this fic if you're interested in hearing them how I think of them! 
> 
> https://jocarthage.tumblr.com/tagged/how-can-I-keep-from-singing

Alex and Michael got dinner every night that week, ending the week with Michael cooking for him and them lounging together, two of them to one creaking lawn chair out front of his Airstream, a fire, and some thoroughly charred marshmallows. They kept getting distracted, soft kisses and wandering hands. 

They’d both decided that they had time, they didn’t have to rush. 

They had time. 

\--

**September 12th, 2020 [52 Days to the General Election]**

On Saturday, Alex was running late to rehearsal, having had more to say to Jesse’s grave than any other week. Harlan had left the week before without further incident.

He hustled through the sanctuary, down the red carpeted stairs, heart-fluttering, ready to see Michael. They were going to get dinner afterwards.

In the choir room, there was no Michael.

He froze in the doorway and pulled out his phone. If he’d needed a ride or been sick, he’d --

He didn’t know if they were telling the rest of their choir about them. 

But there were 8 of them, it would be kind of weird not to ask.

He said to the room, still hovering in the doorway: “Hey, you know where Michael is?”

Marty shrugged, adjusting his seat at the piano: “He let me know he wasn’t coming.”

Alex felt a twinge. If Michael had had time to tell Marty he wasn’t coming, he should have had time to tell Alex he wasn’t coming.

“Is he ok?”

Marty shrugged again: “I don’t know, it’s a volunteer choir. We’ve changed-up what we’re working on so he won’t miss anything. I hope, whatever it is, he’s ok.”

Alex nodded, typing out:  _ “Everything ok?” _ then putting the phone away again as Marty said:

“Alright, phones down, let’s get going. Before we get started, I want to make sure everybody is ok with the fliers for the next concert. They’re not going to include Michael’s name or face, even though he will be performing with us. I’ve pulled headshots for each of us from social media.”

Alex took what Marty offered: there is was. All 8 of them, plus a big face-shaped question mark marked “mystery guest”, all printed out in color. Their headshots, the title said: “Roswell New Mexico’s Queer Chorus Fall Concert, October 5.”

He looked at his service photo, his full name, and the Rainbow banner under “Queer Chorus.” And he realized how Harlan had known about his concert.

Then he thought:  _ fuck it, I’m out in a month. What the fuck is he they going to do? _

“I’ll take 50.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about to post the next chapter in a few minutes so I'm not leaving anyone anxious and hanging!


	7. I hear its music ringing

**September 12th, 2020 [52 Days to the General Election]**

After rehearsal, Alex walked back to his truck. He’d been sharp all rehearsal, jaw tense, throat muscles unwilling to relax, shoulders so tight his back was aching. He hadn’t heard his phone ping with a reply, but then he realized he’d messaged him on Discord and he hadn’t quite figured out the settings so it would make a noise when a message came in.

He went to check the app and there is was from Michael:

> Michael:  There was a raid today.

Alex’s blood ran cold.

He hadn’t -- he hadn’t heard about a raid.

He typed out:  _ “Are you  _ “

Then he deleted it, writing instead: _ “Is Discord secure?” _

> Michael: Yeah, they’re not
> 
> Michael: Yeah it’s secure enough. They’re not tapping wires or anything. They don’t need evidence of me being undocumented, they just need to find me.
> 
> Alex:  Ok, are you ok?  
>    
>  Michael:  It’s just, there was going to be a roadblock between me and the church, so, no choir.

Alex nodded to himself then typed: 

> Alex: Ok

He pictured where Sander’s auto yard was, where the highway was, and the grocery store.

> Alex:  Do you need food?

There was a pause.

> Michael:  I’ve planned for this, Alex. I’ve got enough to last me like a month around here.
> 
> Michael:  You don’t have to worry about me.
> 
> Alex:  too late
> 
> Alex:  would you appreciate company?
> 
> Alex: with you not here, my dinner plans kind of got blown up :)
> 
> Michael:  Oh, Alex, I’m sorry. I entirely forgot to text you. I’m just not used to 
> 
> Michael:  having somebody else care
> 
> Alex:  Yeah, I’m not either.
> 
> Alex: Is it alright if I come over? I can tell you if the roadblock’s gone.
> 
> Michael:  Yeah, that would be really great, thanks
> 
> Michael:  You gonna bring something to distract me?
> 
> Alex:  I’m not enough?
> 
> Michael:  Alex Manes, you are always enough.

\--

He came out of the truck, arms full of Crashdown burgers.

“So,” Michael called out as he walked towards him, “What did you bring to distract me, Airman?”

Alex grinned and jiggled the bag: “Burgers.”

Michael frowned, looking him up and down a little bit. “What? I thought we were going to -- “ and he made a vaguely sexual gesture.

Alex looked him over. There were lines of tension and stress around his bright eyes, shoulders held stiffly, one arm held protectively across his stomach. And he could see it -- Michael channeling all this energy into something physical and fun. But all he could think of were times when he had been trapped, locked behind a door, made afraid by men he couldn’t fight. And sure, sex would be nice, as a distraction.

But in Alex’s experience of the world, how you begin is how you’ll go on. And he didn’t want sex between them to be wrapped-up in the inhumanity and politics of 2020 in America. He wanted it to be about them: their bodies and their minds — and their hearts.

Alex shrugged his shoulders: “We could, but I know you said you had food, but I’ve been picturing you in some horrible 1950s bunker eating MREs, and,” he jiggled the Crashdown bag: “I bring sustenance worthy of opera singers, robotics coaches -- and friends.”

Michael grinned, wrapping his arms around him, pressing his mouth to his once, murmuring low in his ear, voice making him shiver. “That’s impossibly sweet, Alex Manes.”

He pressed his lips to Michael’s shoulder’s flannel clad armor, finally telling some whining, growling animal part of him that Michael was  _ here _ and  _ safe _ . His voice was soft when he said: “It is what it is.”

Michael softened into him impossibly further, hands moving across his back. 

Alex moved his face to the warm, soft skin of Michael’s throat. Alex heard himself whisper: “I got really worried for you. I know it’s only been a week, but I -- I got worried.”

“I’m really sorry --”

“No, I’m not asking you to apologize. I just,” he paused, taking a breath, “Let’s eat. And maybe you can tell me what would be the best way for me to find out, when there’s raids? I want to help. I know I can’t solve the problem. But two sets of ears out listening is probably better than one?”

Michael spoke slowly as they unpacked the burgers on the little table he had setup under the fairy lights behind his Airstream, fries in the middle, burgers beside each other so he and Alex could share a bench. 

“There’s a lot of informal communication. People who know each other don’t have status. We tend to pass info around to each other. One text message at a time. No group texts of course, no lists of everyone who’s undocumented in the area. That would not be wise. But -- yeah, I mean,” he paused, “There’s a Rapid Responder Network you can join. That would help. If you have status you can actually go and check-out if there is a raid. It’s one of the things that makes this so hard, is you hear there’s a rumor there’s a raid or a roadblock, but you don’t actually  _ know _ . And you have to plan your day around _ not knowing _ . And it’s such a high price: if you screw-up, you don’t get to go home.”

Alex nodded, voice cracking, burger untouched: “Have I mentioned that I fucking hate this?”

“Yeah,” Michael said, reaching out for the fries. 

“So, I sign-up for a --”

“Rapid Responder Network,”

“Ok, if I Google around I’ll be able to find it? And the roadblock was being cleared when I came through.”

Michael sighed, shoulders ratcheting down a notch. “Yeah, I don’t think I can give you a direct referral. I don’t think they know -- there’s one of the members who tells one of the people I know and then he tells one of the other undocumented folks, who tells us. But the actual network is partially funded by a bunch of grants, and if the grantmakers found out it’s being used to actively evade ICE, it wouldn’t --”

“Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Yeah, but grants are complicated sometimes, people get all finicky about all kinds of things. The network does a lot of good, it’s not worth it jeopardizing it. So, we keep that part on the downlow.”

“I know about that life.”

It wasn’t a smile, but Michael’s frown faded a little, his eyes skimming over Alex’s features before he said: “I figured you might.”

Michael's next words were quiet, nearly caught by the light wind of the evening: “I’d — I’d understand if this status-stuff is too much — “

“No,” Alex said harshly and Michael flinched. Alex took a nose breath, frustrated with himself. He put a hand on Michael’s elbow and his muscles were wooden, tense, like he was trying to protect himself. “This isn’t something that you’re doing. This is something that’s happening to you. I’m never going to blame you for it. And I wish it wasn’t happening, but I wish that for you and not for me. I wish that for both of us.

“I wish,” he shook his head, “Well, you know what I wish. I don’t need to preach to the choir.” Then  Michael’s eyes lit up. “Do you think they’re going to do that tomorrow? At the AME church?”  
  
“What?” Alex said.

“It’s a saying from the African American church community. Because their choirs are usually behind the pastor? In Catholic churches, most churches have the choirs in the front of the church, so they’re always preaching to the choir.”

Alex paused: “I never really thought of it that way.”

Michael cocked his head: “ Since the roadblock is cleared, I figured we could still go and get an idea of how 'By an' By' is meant to be sung. After we eat these, want to see something distracting — something else?”

Alex smiled, finally reaching for his cooled burger: “What did you have in mind?”

Michael gave him a ghost of a smile: “Have you noticed how many bunkers there are around here?”

“Yeah,” Alex said slowly, eyes scanning the dirt.

“So, there’s one here.” He said, taking a bite. “There used to be a — Sanders’ uncle built it in the ‘50s. That’s why I started staying here. One of the problems with liking music is you like to collect music, and one of the problems with living in an Airstream is that there’s no storage. So, this essentially gives me a garage that won’t get damp — and will outlast the nuclear holocaust.”

“Good thinking,” Alex said, voice even, trying to control his smile.

“Ok, give me a minute,” Michael said.

Michael chomped down on the last bite of his burger, then stood to get in his truck. Alex finished his burger more slowly as he watched Michael back the truck up. Then he heard the rattle of chains followed by a groaning, creaking sound, as the Airstream was pulled backwards, revealing — a manhole cover?

Michael threw the truck into park, stepping around to unhook the chain from the front tow-hook, quirking a smile at Alex.

“I can get in, crawling under the Airstream, on days like this when I have to. That’s why I didn’t text though, there’s no reception down there. Sorry again about that.”

Alex shook his head, waving it away.

“But I figured it wouldn’t be much of a date if I made you roll in the dirt.” Michael glanced over at him, carefully not looking at his leg.

Alex shrugged: “I don’t know, getting dirty can be a lot of fun.”

Michael choked and said: “Noted.”

And then he led the way over to the manhole cover. There was a crowbar lying beside it and he levered it up, sliding it over to the side. He opened his phone up, tapped a couple of times, and then —

“Is that Papageno's aria? ” 

The music box music was billowing-up from inside the bunker, violins soft and sweet.

“What can I say? I appreciate the classics.”

He started to work his way into the hole. Alex called down after him:  "Do you know the story of how Papageno ended-up in 'The Magic Flute'?" 

"No? I don't think so," came back up, muffled and intertwining with the Papagena's voice.

Alex spoke as he took careful, even steps down the ladder: "So Mozart was broke as fuck, right? And he hadn't paid his rent. And his landlord was after him. So he went to the man, and said: 'Alright, I obviously can't pay rent. But! I'll put you in my new, deeply weird, Masonry-inspired opera.' The man thought about it and told Mozart: 'Alright. But I can't carry a tune and I have one condition.' Mozart, seeing reprieve from daily haranguings about his thoroughly unpaid rent said, 'Sure, no problem I'll write you an easy aria. What's the other condition?' And the landlord says: 'I need to wear my bird suit.' And Mozart is like, 'wtf?' And the landlord insists, says, 'I have this totally awesome bird suit and no where to wear it so if I'm going to be in your opera rather than get my money, I need to be able to wear my bird suit and not have to sing any hard songs.' And Mozart is like: 'ok?'"

Alex reached the bottom of the ladder, getting settled on his feet before turning around as he said: "And so that's why there's this bizarre, bird-suited character in the middle of Mozart's magnum opus on Masonic symbolry and this super-easy, absolutely adorkable scene between Papageno and Papagena. So Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart didn't have to pay rent."

Then Alex turned around and  \-- “Wow,” Alex said.

There were chandeliers and big, oversized lightbulbs, and a gently flickering lamp Michael tapped on the side until the light evened out. Coming from everywhere, hooked into the walls, was an amazing, homemade surround system. Different kinds of speakers, different kinds of wiring, all coming together to fill the space with deep, humming low base notes that vibrated through the highly polished cement at his feet, high notes that he swore he could hear pinging around the lightbulbs. It felt like being  _ inside _ the orchestra pit.

As Alex’s eyes took in to the lower light, he saw a big wall rack of, yep, MREs. With big flats of water. Then a curtain around something that was probably a toilet, probably going to a massive septic tank. 

But what his eyes was drawn to, over and over again, was what was on the tables. Robots and kits and wiring; laptops in various states of disrepair and repair. An entire workshop. 

An entire life.

“Michael, this is amazing.”

Michael turned, smiling, the set of his shoulders finally fully relaxing.

“Yeah, it’s pretty great. Isobel designed it for me.”

“Your sister?” Alex asked.

He nodded.

“How come she can work above the table?”

Michael frowned, fingers tracing along a circuit board on the table: “She and Max, they got adopted right away. Cute kids usually do. The Evanses, they must have smelled the trouble on me,”

Alex was shaking his head, taking a half-step forward before he paused, wanting to let Michael finish.

“Anyway, their adoption cleaned-up their immigration status just fine. And mine just -- never seemed to resolve.”

He shook his head, curls bouncing. “It wouldn’t happen that way, now a days. But in the 90s, before computer records,” he shrugged again, “Sometimes people just got lost. And Max went into the Sheriff’s office, so on the odd times I ended-up on the wrong side of the bars he got me out before I went into any system more complex than Sheriff Valenti’s shit file. It worked. For a long time, it worked. No on was really looking for someone like me. But then,”

Alex nodded. November 8, 2016 had changed a lot of things for a lot of people.

Michael shook his head.

“Anyway. I figured if we're looking for some distraction, I could show you the robots I built for the high school robotics club to play around with? There's some bugs I'd love to chat with someone whose voice isn't cracking.”

The sound system played through the scores of _Die Zauberflöte_ and _Carmen_ and _Spring Awakening._  


They played with the robots together for hours, until well after midnight. Michael showed Alex every trick in the battle bots' repertoires, letting him explore the code base and grinning when he fixed a knotty legacy issue together. 

Alex drove home and slept alone in his bed, grin tucked in his cheek and hands tingling with warmth, alarm set for the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my knowledge, every single part of that wild Mozart story is true. Here is one of the weirder (and those most accurate) stagings of that scene from _Die Zauberflöte_ (Warning to suicidal imagery in each of these --   
> _The Magic Flute_ is such a weird opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UE2GC5db0 and a version with French subtitles if that helps folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZo0klTdVGg and a version in English, which is a lot dumber sounding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF0lidudY74
> 
> I sang third genii in a production of Die Zauberflöte and there was a story about a production where, during the part where Papageno and Papagena are arguing about whether they will have more chickens than roosters (more "papagenas" or "papagenos"), they had this massive bag of tiny stuffie tropical birds and every time they would say "papageno!" or "papagena!" they would throw another stuffed bird into the audience. Opera breeds madness and I love it so much.
> 
> Also, there's a version of _Spring Awakening_ performed by a mixed Deaf and hearing cast and it is the most amazing thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twGeBOqmriY (starting at about 33:00 it gets a little NSWF and it's still my entire jam: https://youtu.be/twGeBOqmriY?t=1981)


	8. It sounds an echo in my soul // how can I keep from singing?

**September 13th, 2020 [51 Days to the General Election]**

It was an hour and a half drive to the AME church in Albuquerque. Service started at 10:30am, so Alex showed-up bright and caffeinated at 8:20am at Michael’s Airstream. Michael was nowhere to be seen. Alex walked up and knocked on the door:

“Mrr?” he heard from inside.

Alex chuckled a bit, knocking again: “I’m guessing you’re not ready to go to church.”

“Mrrr?!” he heard, slightly more frantic.

There was a sound of crashing and Michael ripped open the screen door, hair in his face, tousled, a very thin sheet held very loosely around his waist. Alex gulped, trying to look only and exclusively at his eyes:

“Uh, what time is it?” Michael gasped.

Alex checked his phone: “8:22. It’s an hour and a half drive —”

“Ok, ok, I’ll be ready. 5 minutes. I’ll be ready.” He paused, “Uh, I’d ask you to come in but I kind of want the first time you see me naked to be special, and not hurried and —”

“Yeah, it’s fine —” 

Michael smacked the door closed, Alex wavering back a little bit from the force of it.

He wandered over to go sit on one of the lawn chairs, fiddling with his phone. Michael hustled out and well — he cleaned-up nice. He was wearing a white button-up with a collar he was shoving flat, plus grey slacks. He put his arms out to the side, not having been able to spread them out fully in the Airstream.

“Church appropriate?”

Alex nodded: “I mean, there’s no way we’re ever going to fit in, but we won’t look disrespectful either.”

“So you can tell me a little bit about church etiquette on the way there. I’m not a frequent flier, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Alex nodded: “I called the music director ahead so that he would know that we were coming, but we’re both going to be kind of winging it."

Michael wrapped a solid arm around him, pressing a solid kiss to his mouth.

“As long as I’m with you, I’m fine winging it.”

—

The church was tucked into a little suburban corner of Albuquerque and Alex didn’t even try to find a space in the packed lot, parking a few blocks out.

“Welcome!” Said the greeter as he pressed two color-printed programs into their hands.

“Thank you,” they both murmured. The entryway was crowded with people shaking hands, greeting each other, smiling. Kids were running around, though Alex saw a harried-looking teacher beginning to gather them for Sunday school in a side room.

They walked right through and into the church: white walls, a choir getting ready in the back in bright robes, and yes, excellent hats.

Alex glanced at Michael, seeing wide eyes and his hand sneaking up to hold onto his forearm, fingers sliding roughly over the slick fabric. He wanted — just for a moment, he wanted to reach down, twine his fingers through Michael’s, to see if physical touch would make him easier, would spread the same soothing warmth through him that Alex thought it might.

But there hadn’t been any rainbow flags out front of this church; no mentions of partners on the website. No other queer couples visible in the room. 

Alex kept his hands in his pockets.

And he felt bad — was he assuming they wouldn’t be welcoming? Was he basing it off of some kind of inherited racism against New Mexico’s tiny African American community? He felt like he was betraying Maria and Mimi by feeling unsafe here. But he also never assumed he _was_ safe. He never gave any place, any person, the assumption that they would do his job of keeping himself safe, or his new job of keeping Michael safe. He _knew_ it wasn’t open-hearted. He _knew_ it wasn’t fair. But he’d stopped waiting for the world to be fair one warm evening in the back of his father’s woodshed.

Alex gritted his teeth, forcing himself back to this moment, away from the smell of sawdust and the sound of a cherry switch cutting the air. The pastor raised his arms, asking the congregation to stand.

It was time to sing:

> _“Evr’y time I feel the spirit,  
> _ _Moving in my heart  
> _ _I will pray”_

Michael grinned at him as they were finishing the first verse in the hymnal, both of them having conservatively stuck to the melody and ignored the other voice parts. His voice was a low rumble when he whispered in Alex’s ear during the piano bridge: “What, you can’t sight-sing the harmony now?”

And Alex couldn’t know for sure, but he thought, in that moment, that he loved him. He felt a grin split his lips as he took a breath before looping around to the second verse.

He whispered back: “I dare you to sing the Alto part.”

And dammit if Michael didn’t jump up into his head register as Alex jumped down, singing the bass part harmony in perfect tune. Alex saw the familiar twitch of parishioners’ in front of them, trying to see who had brought the new voices to the 10:30am service.

And the whole entire service — which was long and full of speeches and a reading from 1 Samuel 18 that left Michael bright red with suppressed laughter that got so close to the surface Alex was eying the exits for a quick getaway — Michael and Alex played. They would tap a part in the hymnal and dare the other to switch to tenor or alto or, memorably in a version of “By and by,” Alex had to steel himself and quietly sing soprano using his head voice, voice so soft he was sure only Michael could hear him sing: 

> _“I know my wings gonna fit me well,_ _  
> __I’m gonna lay down, this heavy load._ _  
> _ _  
> __I tried them on at the gates of hell._ _  
> __I’m gonna lay down, this heavy load.”_

And Michael — he took every dare, every challenge diving into unfamiliar words and grammars, exploring the centuries of different englishes used in gospel, and finally, getting a better sense of the swing of the music.

After the service, people came-up to greet them, to ask them about their voices, about what brought them to this church. Alex watched as Michael’s arms wound themselves around his own waist, getting small to avoid being brushed by so many new people. None too soon the music director — a small, warm-handed man by the name of Richard Stinson — waded his way through the crowd to find them. 

The first thing he said when he saw Alex was: “I heard what you two were doing,” and just as Alex’s anxiety was about to tidal wave roll him under, Director Stinson finished: “It was a lot of fun trying to guess what shenanigans you all would be trying for next. Your director is lucky to have a couple like you.”

He glanced around and the man seemed to sense his discomfort;  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have assumed —”

Alex glanced at Michael, trying to see in that loud, unfamiliar space if he could tell whether he was ok being outed, if he was prepared for the consequences. But something was shimmering between them, and he wasn’t sure if it was the music or the reading or the long, quiet morning drive across the open desert, but Michael caught his eye and nodded, releasing his forearm from its steely grip and letting his hand dangle between them.

Slow as breathing, Alex reached out, glancing up into Michael’s eyes to check it was ok. Another quick nod and a smirk — and then Alex was wrapping his a hand around Michael’s, bringing the back of his palm up to his lips for a quick kiss. 

“You’re good,” Alex said, “We just weren’t sure if it was ok to be out here.”

The music director shrugged: “As safe as most churches around here. There will be glares and some folks will mutter, but ever since Lynda — our pastor’s daughter -- came out and had it out with anyone who wanted to fight her on it, things have eased up around here.” He shook his head, sighing, “I wish, for once, we didn’t have to fight for every inch of ground we get. But isn’t that the way things always are?”

Alex nodded, not sure what to say but he felt something in him relax, an un-reconstructed wall shiver down a few notches. The man shook his head again: “Alright, want to come to my office? On the phone you said you had some questions.”

The crowd thinned as they worked their way against the flow, until it was just the three of them in a cramped church office off the back of the sanctuary. The office was, in point of fact, a closet — Alex noted the brooms slotted between the spare robes — but every spare surface was covered by music. 

It was pretty close to heaven and they left with a binder full of photocopies to play around with and an open invite to come and sing the next time they were in town.

\--

Alex couldn't describe what the ride home was like.

When he was little, dreaming of a world where he was loved, where he was safe and had value, he’d a few times wondered what it would be like to have someone who liked the same music he did. Once, when he was walking by the music room of the school -- his ROTC requirements conflicted with band after Freshman year at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, so he hadn’t gotten to play much -- he’d seen a flash of curls and thought — _maybe_. Maybe someday a boy and he would get to talk. Get to connect over a piano.

The ride home was nothing like that.

Michael could _sing_ . He could _harmonize_. Alex would start with one hymn from the binder in his lap and Michael would come in, making up the harmonies as they went along. Michael would start an aria and Alex would pound out rhythms on the dashboard until he got the sense of it and then sing it back to him, muddling Italian horribly -- for some reason, Alex had always sung it with a Spanish accent and it drove Michael to fits of giggles with every marred phrase:

> _“Che faro senza Euridice —”_
> 
> _“Frondi tenere, e belle —”_
> 
> _"Quando sarà quel dì  
>  Ch'io mi veggia da te favorito d'un sì?" _

He couldn’t keep going after the third aria for laughing at Michael’s deeply offended face every time he muffed an accent. Finally he stopped, for fear Michael would swerve off the road. And when Michael put his hand on his thigh, grinning as he sung the end of Pagliacci with the most exaggerated puppy eyes, Alex would have died in a car crash rather than move it off of him.

He was _so happy_. He was definitely, unobtrusively, impossibly, in love.

It had only been a week.

He was _so screwed_.


	9. what though the tempest loudly roars,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as a note, I’m going to use a “they” pronoun for the Democratic presidential candidate because I Will Vote For Anyone But The Current President and don’t want to make this hard for anyone with strong feelings about one candidate or another to read.

**September 19th, 2020 [43 Days to the General Election]**

Alex paused at the top of the stairs. Michael had been tuning Bertha before the rehearsal and he'd gone upstairs to get him a smaller wrench from the toolkit in his pickup. But Michael was now on a call and he didn't want to interrupt. It was the first time he could remember Michael getting a call on his cell.

“You’re putting a target on my back.” Came his voice, tight with anger.

A pause.

“Of course I want them to win, but I don’t — “

A longer pause.

“Max, you’ve been — Max, you’ve been in Denver too long, you don’t remember what it’s like back here. They’ll have me in a white van going to the border, you — I’m not going to tell you you can’t, it’s your story too — I’m glad we have different last names, that’s all I’m going to say. Can’t you say ‘a friend’? Yeah, I know it will be more effective —  Jesus , Max. What if they — are you  kidding me. I’m serious, are you kidding me? Did you seriously just say ‘how bad would it be to spend a month in São Paulo?  What if they don’t win? What if I have to spend  four years there? I know it’s not your job to figure it out for me, but if I get deported, where am I going to _sleep_ , Max? I don’t speak Portuguese! Are you --  I _don’t care_ that there’s a lot of people who speak English in Brazil! _I don’t want to be deported!_ Like i said, it’s your story too. If you and Iz — if you think it will — ok. Yeah. Tell Iz I love her. Maybe I love you too.”

Alex knew he wasn’t supposed to have overheard that, but he had, so as he finished coming down the stairs, he murmured: “Hey, that sounded kind of rough, you ok?”

Michael gritted his teeth, glancing down at his hand, clenched tightly around his phone.

“Did I tell you that my brother is the Field Director for the southwest region of the Democratic Presidential Campaign?”

“You didn’t,” Alex said, sidling up to him. “You said ‘he was working in politics up north,’ but I didn’t know what that meant. But you didn’t seem to want to —”

“Yeah,” Michael said, not to be distracted, “He’s also the chief surrogate for the region. A pretty immigrant kid with a law enforcement background and a good speaking voice is solid, solid surrogate material for that campaign. Speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese. Knows how to make friends with FLDS folks and LDS folks and Dine-speakers alike.”

He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face: “He wants to add me to his stump speech. Wants to start talking about his ‘undocumented brother.’” He used extreme air quotes.

For Alex, it was like seeing two worlds at once. One, the part of him that listened to the news, could tell how effective that would be. And the other, who actually knew Michael, was terrified.  _ What good could come of this? _

Michael was right, it would put a target on his back. Anybody who wanted to go after not just Michael but the candidate would know where to aim. It couldn’t be that hard to figure out who Max's brother was.

Michael rubbed his face: “I — look —it’s, it’s fine.”

“It’s  _ not _ fine,” Alex heard himself say, “What if something happens to you?”

Michael was speaking like he wasn’t hearing himself: “Max thinks the other side will be too disorganized to do anything about it before election day. And there are only six more weeks of the campaign. We’ll just do our best.”

Alex refused to be put off: “But whoever wins doesn't get to take over immediately. What if they decide to go for retribution after election day and before the inauguration?”

“I guess I’m going to have to be a model citizen, then,” Michael said, voice catching, “or, a model resident.”

His face was twisted up with pain and Alex's heart twisted with it: “I don’t what else to do. It’s not like I can tell Max to lie about his family on national television. And he asked me, before he started, said one of the reasons why he wanted to take leave from his job as our local sheriff's deputy in Roswell, go work for pennies for this candidate, so I wouldn’t have to — I wouldn’t have to live in fear. So that there would be way for me to get status. And I  _ agreed _ . Just like I agreed on the phone. He’s  _ right _ . If we don’t put skin on the line —”

“It’s not  _ his _ skin that’s going to end-up in São Paulo —” Alex said angrily.

“Yeah,” Michael said, “I know.”

“I don’t like it,” Alex said.

“Yeah, me either.”

Alex hated the defeated sound of his voice, but wanted to keep him talking, to try to help: “And you mentioned Iz? Is that your sister?”

“Isobel, my sister. She’s working advance out in Nevada — a way, way tougher swing state than Colorado. She’s better at the politics stuff than Max is. He can glad-hand anybody, but she can  _ turn _ people. Get inside their heads, get them to believe what she believes. A freaking scary skill.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,”

“Yeah, well, just you wait. Once they’re done fixing the country, they’re going to come back here and decide to fix  _ me.  _ _Again_.”

Alex took a step towards him: “Michael, I don’t think you need fixing.”

This close, Alex could see the moment he decided to shuffle his armor back on: “Of course I don’t. I’m a delight. But you try telling a sister that.”

“I guess.” Alex said, never having had the option.

Michael shook his head: "I don't really want to talk about it."

Alex nodded, stepping into him -- and Michael uncoiled, tucking his ankles around the back of Alex's knees and guiding his face down to a kiss. He was warm and soft and Alex wished, he _wished,_ he knew how to help.


	10. I hear the truth it liveth

**September 19th, 2020 [43 Days to the General Election]**

That night back at his apartment, after rehearsal, Alex unfolded his laptop and went to YouTube. He typed in “Max” and the Democratic presidential candidate’s name.

And there he was, Michael's nose and cheeks and windswept black hair. 12,000 views of a video of him opening up a speech in Colorado Springs. 30,000 for one in Santa Fe. 

"Max Evans: Southwest Region Field Director."

_ Weirdly white name. _

He typed in “Isobel Evans” and found press release after press release after press release. Her name quoted in the _Las Vegas Review Journal_ and the _Deseret News_ a dozen times, both working for the candidate.

He went on Twitter — he had a lurker account, just to sort of keep track of what was going on — and he found the campaign’s New Mexico page. There was a livestream about to start, some kind of post-canvass rally at the Albuquerque campaign office. The livestream camera was going from person to person, aged face to lineless face to white face to brown face, asking them how it had gone on the doors that day, chants of "Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" and "Go fight win! Go fight win!" in the background. Smiling faces and hundreds of campaign signs and hand drawn campaign posters He turned the audio up, setting the laptop on the bare formica counter, and got to working on some dishes from the week before. 

The camera moved to the front of the room and there he was, Max Evans, portable microphone in-hand. He raised his hands, saying: "Clap once if you can hear me."

One clap from those around him.

"Clap twice if you can hear me,"

Two claps, voices behind the camera fading to whispers at the ends of their sentences.

"Clap three times if you can hear me!" he said, voice and hands rising.

Three claps and then perfect silence.

He grinned a boyscout grin and began to speak: “My name is Max Evans. I grew-up in a little town more famous for its aliens than its immigrants. But that’s what I am — that’s what my family are: immigrants. Our parents brought us to this country for a better life. That may be a story that many of you know. That may be a story that isn’t relevant because your family has been here for millennia."

_ He had a nice _ _voice_ , Alex thought as he washed a coffee mug, _ not as nice as Michael’s though _ .

Max was still talking: “With immigration, there’s so much luck involved. We were brought over, my sister and I who some of you may know. We came across the border on our parents’ tourist visa. They overstayed, found jobs, worked under the table. And then -- “ he paused, his lavalier mic picking up the breath catching in his throat, “And then they died. In a car crash. Leaving me, and my sister, and my brother, alone. Now, you don’t know my brother. He's great," another dazzling smile. "But he's had it rough," a sadder look; Alex couldn't tell if it was genuine or practiced or originally genuine and then practiced to be infinitely and perfectly repeatable. "My sister and I were nearly immediately adopted by a nice couple who kept our Brazilian first names — Isobel and Maximo. My brother had the bad luck of not getting adopted.”

The mug slipped and Alex had to fumble it to the bottom of the soapy sink.

“Now, today, with computer records and fingerprints and photo IDs, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Any child that’s in foster care today has status. But my brother, “ he paused, “he never got status." Another pause. "He still doesn't _have_ status." There was a sound in the room, a groan of understanding, a gasp, Alex wasn't sure. "I left my job at the sheriff's office in Roswell, New Mexico, in the town where I had grown-up, because some day — someday soon — if we turn the red dirt of the southwest brilliant blue, my brother will be able to become a US Citizen. He can stop living with ICE haunting him.”

Alex turned off the water, cup half washed, turning to the screen, hands shaking.

“I use that word deliberately, ‘haunted.’ It’s lile that, for my brother, for millions of undocumented people in America today. ICE is like a ghost, a poltergeist -- polterg-ICE —” there was bemused laughter from the audience, and Max spoke over it, voice rising: “It's apt, isn't it? White vans, white faces, a trip to the border and then — nothing. A bunch of white people screaming and throwing things, mostly invisible but always feared, threatening to break into our homes, our houses of worship. Scariest when you can't see them.”

“Now, I know I’m not the only person here who has a family member who is undocumented." A sound of affirmation and the camera panned to show nodding heads. "I _know_ I’m not the only person here fighting for the day when they will be able to come out of the shadows. Fighting today for a future where our friends our family, our  _ brothers  _ and sisters and siblings can come out of the shadows. Our candidate knows that too. I am here, working for them, to ensure a world where my brother’s fate isn’t determined by luck or spite or ICE, but by his own two good hands.”

“That’s why I need every single one of you not just to knock doors, though we knocked 2000 today," a cheer went up and Max grinned, holding his hands up. "I need you not just to register to vote. Not just to vote. But to get 10 people, 20, 100 people to vote. Because that’s the only way we’re going to make it work.”

“Because the other-side," and there was a rumble, a mix of boos and hisses and he nodded, quieting them with his hands. "The other side going to —” he paused, a rakish smile moving across his square, handsome face. Alex clenched his jaw. On the livestream, Max glanced to the side: “I’m going to use a word to describe their tactics, and my sister would kill me if she heard me say it on a livestream though my brother would appreciate it, so I’m going to unplug this microphone for just a second. Our opponent is going to engage in rat —”

And the sound cup out as Max unplugged his mic from his battery pack, but it was very clear that he mouthed the word “fucking.” When he plugged the sound back in, the audience was laughing and cheering.

“They’re going to do that. They’re going to try to kick people off the voter rolls. They’re going to block people from the polls. They’re going to block the _highways_ on November 3rd for some kind of un-reschedulable construction," boos and hissing and here, just for a moment, he saw Max look genuinely angry for the first time. _The thought of municipal government misspending taxes in a partisan way makes him flare in rage but all the rest doesn't?_

"Because there’s nothing more that scares Trump's campaign more than a room full of people ready, willing, and able to exercise their right to vote. Don’t plan for it to be easy. Don’t plan for it to work. Plan to fight. Plan to do what you need to do.”

There was a cheer and nods, determined faces. The camera zoomed in on a mother and what looked like her teenaged daughter, arm in arm, clipboards in-hand, faces serious as cancer.

Max's voice was quiet, rolling and clear through the livesteam: “Take care of each other. Take care of your communities. And on January 22nd, 2020, I have the candidate’s promise," he took a breath, and you could hear a pin drop in that office park campaign office. "I have their _promise_ that the first bill they sign will be to abolish ICE!”

The room positively exploded. 

"We've only got 43 days until the General Election. Now," Max said, that boyish smile lighting up his face again, "Remind me, is this room what democracy looks like?"

The woman behind the camera called out: "Show me what democracy looks like!"

And the crowd answered, full-throated as a choir: "This is what democracy looks like!"

Max yelled back, grinning wide and proud: "Show me what democracy looks like!" 

"This is what democracy looks like!"

The camera cut to black on those cheering, smiling, placard-waving faces.

Alex stood, cold in his kitchen. Alex — he felt that duality again. Max was a great speaker. It was a powerful stump speech. A good promise. And pouring over all that was his gut-churning, ice-veined dread for Michael.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For readers who aren't in the US, these are the kinds of raids that Max is mentioning: https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/05/14/ice-raid-san-diego-home-raises-questions-force
> 
> Here is an example of what those chants sound like in person. I've led them, I've sang them, they are one of my favorite parts of field organizing: https://youtu.be/WTLg729voaU?t=116
> 
> I left a comment with a bit more context, if you're curious, about where I'm coming from on Max's characterization here.


	11. what though the darkness round me close // songs in the night it giveth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a discussion of Alex's time in Iraq that isn't graphic but is probably upsetting.

**September 25th, 2020 [39 Days to the General Election]**

Alex hitched his hip against the table under the massive awning in the junkyard, eyeing Michael as he finished his Friday afternoon work.

It wasn’t a chore, watching him bent under the hood of a distressed minivan as the sun dappled down through the early fall clouds, warming the land enough that Michael had taken off his shirt. And something in Alex eased with every moment he watched him, saw he was ok, not in ICE custody, not being hurt, not scared. Just fixing a car, sweat running down the slow sway of his spine.

No. No kind of chore at all.

Michael knew he was looking, standing up to give a long, languorous stretch before bending down again. He’d told Alex this repair was a favor -- ie, one he was not being paid for -- for a single Mom he knew who’d adopted someone from the group home where he’d been stashed.

It was -- like there were all of these different lives, for Michael, in Roswell. There was the prickly cowboy stuff, the fights he said he never started, the righteous distrust of any and all authority. 

And that was all true. Michael had cut a rough swath through parts of the town. Alex had seen the scars, had heard about the hangovers, though Michael had stuck to water on their dinner dates. Alex didn’t love it, but it was true.

Then there was this. This kind of softness, this easiness, and the reality that people around here relied on him. People counted on him to fix their trucks and minivans. People counted on him to photocopy their fliers and come to practice, to sing the harmonies and explain the Italian markings in their oratorio. Parents let him teach the robotics club after school, letting him get to know their kids and letting their kids get to know him. Wild-haired, bisexual mechanic Michael, and his kaleidoscope of relationships, always bright and blending into each other, always unexpected, always uncertain until just they resolved into clarity just at the moment he needed them.

Michael tapped the minivan’s hood down, letting it snick softly. There was this too, this reality too that Michael -- despite his singing opera and working on cars and tool filled robotics shop -- didn’t like loud noises. And Alex, he got that. He  _ really _ got that. He got asking before touching, never assuming a perfect welcome, letting other people have bad days. 

He had that too, got all of that from the same place Michael got it -- unearned pain, unwanted but beaten-in wariness.

Michael flicked him a grin over his shoulder and picked-up his shirt. He must have seen the disappointed look on Alex’s face because he just flipped the damp white slip of a thing over his shoulders and began to saunter towards Alex. Alex takes a quick look around -- Sanders was long gone, the owner of the minivan is still at Crashdown with her kids, planning to come back tomorrow. And Michael was -- impending.

Alex eased himself up onto the stainless steel work table, prosthetic pulling a little bit at the gravity, the weight of it loosening something tense in his leg as he watched him cross the yard. He puts his hands behind his hips and leans back, so when Michael came to him he was chasing his mouth, bearing down on him while Alex wrapped his ankles around the backs of his thighs, holding him in tighter and closer. Michael made a sound like Alex was the first cool drink he’s had all day and Alex made it right back, muffling the sound of pleasure just between the two of them.

Then Alex surged forward, stomach muscles straining, catching himself on Michael’s bare chest, holding himself up by leverage alone before hooking his arms underneath Michael’s and enjoying the broad planes of Michael’s back. He was sun-warmed and soft under his fingers, his muscles standing-out from the hard day's work. Alex pressed his face to Michael's neck, working his hands down his back, digging into -- and Michael melted against him with a sigh. There they were, the tight, tense muscles at the base of his spine, just above where his jeans slung down low. Alex worked the muscles as Michael moaned into his shoulder, arms wrapping around him, holding him ever more tightly.

“Hey,” Michael said softly, pulling back to look Alex in the eyes.

“Hey.” Alex replied, his voice matching Michael’s for quiet. Alex pressed his face into his shoulder again, thinking of white vans, men in medium fades and Ray Bans, and never seeing Michael again. It felt like walking on a gangplank, looking down and not being able to see the end, not being able to --

“How are you feeling?”

Michael shrugged, “Like doing something I can control, since everything else is out of my hands. I wanted to show you something.”

“Yeah?” Alex said, following him as he stepped back away from the table, body moving through the warm afternoon air, golden in his sight.

Michael opened the screen-door to his Airstream and snagged something, pulling it out and wiggling it in the air:

Alex laughed: “Did Ms Herstin teach you guitar too?”

Michael smiled, broad and pleased: “No, she’d think it was sacrilege. Not a classical instrument in most non-Spanish language operas, the guitar. No," he said, looking down at the curved pale wood body of it, "I learned it busking, between 8th and 9th grades. The place I was at, there was never enough food, and no supervision. So I taught myself whatever was on the radio and busked in downtown Roswell, out front of the UFO museum. It got me enough food to get through the summer without free school lunches, got me enough to start saving up. I actually convinced one of my CASAs — Court Appointed Special Advocates — to co-sign on a bank account and I kept it a secret through the next few placements. Then a foster brother needed bail and I emptied the damn thing, my life savings. Then he jumped bail and put the rest in his arm. But still,” he paused, “the thing is, the system can teach you to be cruel. To treat people, people who are just like you, as disposable. But Jeremy wasn’t. He wasn’t disposable. Fucked up, stupid sometimes, not a great guy — but he didn’t deserve to be in a cage,” he paused, looking down at his fingers, "None of us did.”

Alex took a step forward, hand going softly to Michael's arm, thumb slotting into the hard line of his biceps, not knowing what to say. Michael quirked him a smile and then moved to sit on a lawn chair, patting the space beside him for Alex. He settled the guitar on his keeps and rolled his fingers across it, retuning, then began picking in a classical Spanish style.

A simple chord progression. When he started singing, Alex had assumed he was doing a solfege warm-up. But then he realized it was  _ both _ solfege, and Spanish, all at the same time: 

> _ La mi sola, Laureola  
>  _ _ La mi sola, sola, sola…  
>  _ _ Yo el cautivo Leriano  
>  _ _ Aunque mucho estoy ufano  
>  _ _ Herido de aquella mano  
>  _ _ Que en el mundo es una sola.  
>  _ _ La mi sola Laureola  
>  _ _ La mi sola, sola, sola. _

As the last chord faded, Alex murmured: “That’s beautiful.”

Michael nodded: “It’s a poem by Juan de Ponce, the Spaniard who set-out to find the fountain of youth and found Florida instead.”

“Not a good trade.” Alex said with the conviction of someone who’d learned to shave on the Florida panhandle.

“No.” Michael said. “But the song isn’t from his time murdering people in the Americas. It was from the crusades. It’s,” he paused, frowning a little, trying to see something in Alex’s face. Alex didn’t know what to show him, so he just looked back, “It’s a love song, to a Muslim woman, from when he was captive. He’s either saying, my only Laureola, or I am alone, Laureola. It’s never clear in the poem.”

Alex nodded, and then it clicked. Why Michael had been worried about telling him that detail, what Michael thought might be true of him.

“This time last year,” he started, “I was in Erbil.” 

And Michael stilled, setting the guitar aside, hitching his chin over Alex’s shoulder, arm around his back, hand on his hip, and body listening.

“You want to talk about it?” 

Alex was already talking -- it seemed like he was always talking about Iraq -- to himself at least. Trying to sing over what he remembered hearing, trying to plant and paint over what he remembered seeing, trying to rebuild when he and so many other spent so much time destroying. But maybe nobody else heard how much everything he did was about Erbil. 

Alex heard himself ask: “You ever been?”

Michael shook his head, curls brushing Alex’s ear: “Never left the US. Don’t have a valid passport.”

Alex nodded, cheeks heating. "That makes sense." He took a breath. "It’s a bullshit disaster of a war, in case you might have come to the mistaken impression that I think us killing 182,000 Iraqis was something to be proud of as a country. Or that I have a problem with people who are Muslim.”

And Michael stilled: ”I didn’t know it was that many.”

Alex closed his eyes. “Most people don’t. Most people don’t--” And he shuddered out a breath, bending down at the place where Michael was holding him around the waist, keeping him steady.

“Here,” Michael said, as if they were just talking normally, as if Alex wasn’t falling to pieces under his hands, curling up behind him so Alex could lean against him.

His voice was quiet and so, so far away. “So the thing is -- the things is -- it’s beautiful there. Old. So old I can’t even express it. I thanked God every day that I was from the desert, from places with old stone, because I could understand -- I just thought of their buildings as mesas, made by human hands, but no less amazing. But it’s not -- I don’t want to orientalize it. The apartment buildings were new and shiny -- they had all this development in the 50s and 70s and -- just this whole world. CNN International only ever shows the villages, which is kind of like if every broadcast about Russia was illustrated by pictures of the schetles and not the skyscrapers of Moscow. It’s just a fucking weird way we talk about it there, about the people there. There was a lot of ways to explain it but -- deserts and tall buildings, sand and sandwiches, and people just --"

Alex tried to breathe; “People just trying to live their lives Just running little internet cafes and food trucks and dance parties, people getting married and having babies and voting, and just -- trying to live. One fucking dictator after another, one fucking war after another -- men and their egos, it’s a disease that will fucking kill us all. And in the midst of all of it, a military that just took and took and -- “ Alex cut himself off, breath sounding too much like a sob, words gone.

And Michael just held him against his chest, held him until the sunset looked like coals scattered across the reflecting desert and then after, until above them there was nothing, nothing but the ever watching stars. When Alex started to shiver, Michael laid the guitar in his lap, saying:

“Try this.”

Michael put the pick in his hand, and showed him the pattern, a bit at a time as he worked his hand up and down the neck, playing the chords, patient, slow as Alex moved back out from inside himself, relearned how to work his body after the long quiet inside. It was like playing the piano with one finger and drew into the cool starlight, his back against Michael's warm front. Once they settled on a rhythm, Michael started singing:

> _ Oyfn furl ligt dos kelbl  
>  _ _ Ligt gebundn mit a shtrik  
>  _ _ Hoykh in himl flit dos shvelbl  
>  _ _ Freydt zikh, dreyt zikh hin un krik. _
> 
> _ Dona, dona, dona, dona,  
>  _ _ Dona, dona, dona, do,  
>  _ _ Dona, dona, dona, dona,  
>  _ _ Dona, dona, dona, do _
> 
> _ Lakht der vint in korn  
>  _ _ Lakht un lakht un lakht  
>  _ _ Lakht er op a tog a gantsn _

Then Michael scooted back, leaning against the back, and Alex had sort of sat next to his legs, watching as he showed him the chords, and he picked them out, guitar easy on his resting legs. He sung it again in English, translating without a hint of the exaggerated mistranslations he used to make Alex laugh on the ride back from the AME church. Just his voice, the words, and the sound of plucked strings, voice as powerful as Max's in its own way in the space between them, digging into the final verse, each word emphasized:

> Calves are easily bound and slaughtered  
>  Never knowing the reason why.  
>  But whoever treasures freedom,  
>  Like the swallow has learned to fly.

Then Michael tucked his leg back and repeated that line: " _Like the swallow has learned to_ fly," and Alex slid a little closer as he cycled through the chords again.

There was something about the quiet communication between two bodies, getting to know each other’s shapes. Alex missed a fingering, spoiling a chord, and instead of burying his face in his hands, he let his heated cheeks warm against Michael’s shoulder. Alex moved back a little bit closer, hips flush against Michael’s inner thigh.

Michael sighed into the soft hair at the side of his neck.

Alex considered pretending to be colder than he was, but he decided he didn’t really want a pretext. So he reached over, picked up one of Michael’s arms, and wrapped it around his own waist, between the body of the guitar and his own. He was close enough to Michael that he heard him suck air between his teeth, take a breath and breathe out slowly and evenly.

Alex settled against him.

And there was music, chords and progressions, soft corrections and shared breaths. But their bodies were having an entirely different conversation. About touch and safety, closeness and warmth.

When Alex felt the ghost of pressure against the top of his head, and knew from how Michael had moved that he’d just kissed his crown, he felt like the sound of a deadbolt thrown against a private space, a key snicking in a lock, making sure just the two of them were safe, inside, together, and every ghost between them locked out.

Alex set down the guitar when the moon crested over the Airstream and Michael said: “Come on, I don’t think you want to drive.” 

Alex nodded, carrying the guitar into the Airstream as gently as he’d ever handled his weapon. He stood, mind quiet from the music but empty and cold from remembering the war, and Michael was there, pressing sweatpants and a fresh t-shirt into his hands, stepping outside to give him a chance to change. Alex sat on the bed, hands in his lap, and when Michael came back in, the warm light of the bed’s lamp showed -- a warming, appreciative look. Some heat, some protectiveness, so, so much affection. And Alex settled, just a bit, more back into himself.

Michael offered: “I can take the floor if,” and Alex shook his head no. Michael quirked a smile, slipping his boots off without ceremony and shucking his jeans, belt ringing on the metal floor.

“You gonna scoot over or am I going to have to lose a few pounds to fit in?” he murmured as he walked over to the bed and Alex moved to the side, finding his words for the first time in hours.

“I’ve never, shared a bed,” he heard himself say, Michael’s eyes widening a little as he said, “Not with someone that I've liked, as much as I like you.” He heard his voice waver ringing across the Airstream, felt his lungs shrink with the confession.

Michael hitched one knee on the bed beside Alex's hip, telegraphing bringing his hand to rest on Alex’s shoulder, thumb smoothing the big muscle above his collarbone as Alex sighed into the gesture, tilting his head to kiss Michael's inner arm, just above the burn scar. Michael’s voice so full of something Alex couldn’t name he was bursting with it: “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Alex. But God am I glad to have you.”

Alex felt the ghost of a smile move across his lips and Michael nudged him to scoot over closer to the wall. Michael sat beside him on the narrow bed, arm tucked behind him to give their shoulders enough space.

“Bed sharing is pretty simple,” he said, affecting Marty-like lecturing tone, “Both people try to steal the covers, everyone is all knees and elbows and bad breath and farting and the only reason anyone puts up with all that nonsense is the feeling of waking up to all that skin, of being able to touch and hold and be held, is probably the best thing in the entire universe.”

Alex felt himself shaking with silent laughter, muttering: “That is possibly the least romantic way you could have put that.”

Alex felt Michael’s shrug all across his back: “I save my romance for music. Bed sharing is deeply practical stuff. Now,” he said, unfurling a quilt he’d tucked beneath the bed and laying it over their legs, “When we do this in a bigger bed, we’ll have two blankets, one for each of us, which undercuts the blanket thievery. Nothing but teeth brushing and good diets fixes the other stuff. But,” and he traced a quick finger down Alex’s shoulder, “when we get to the point of other activities, they do make-up for it.”

Alex rolled his head back onto Michael’s shoulder: “We should find an AirBnB,” Alex heard himself say.

“Yeah?” Michael said.

Alex spoke as he thought about it: “Like, someplace we can go, that’s just us. That’s quiet. If Sanders can spare you for a few days --”

“I -- are you asking me to run away with you? Do our very own impression of swallows?”

“Not forever,” Alex said, the undercurrent of  _ don’t be overwhelming, don’t be too much _ singing in his ears, “But, might as well take a little bit of time to ourselves? I’ve got the leave time, it’s not like they want or need me on base while I’m waiting out the end of this term.”

“Yeah, let’s do it. We can find someplace nice, someplace quiet and,” Michael pressed his lips to Alex’s shoulder, “May try some new things too.”

Alex thought about all of the things hew wanted to do, all seeming distant and transparent in his current headspace, but he knew, he knew so clearly he could count it with his hands, how much he wanted to touch Michael, no matter how his brain was. He whispered: “Yeah”

The self-satisfaction in Michael’s voice was toe-curling: “Sounds like a plan.”

\--

The next morning, Alex tipped his head to the side, letting the early morning light filter red through his eyelashes, not bothering to fully open his eyes. He felt — safe. Safe, because Michael was between him and the door, arm under his head and other one around his waist. Safe, because Michael was soft and for a few bare minutes, entirely and completely safe.

In the quiet of the morning, with no one watching him and no one to know, Alex let his heart unfold. He let it blossom, soft and new, a soft thing in such a hard place, gentle as it rolled in the share air between him and Michael Guerin.

\--

Alex booked the AirBnB as his truck ticked down to coolness in the parking lot of the cemetery the next morning.

They would head out after service on Sunday morning, a nice little place up in the Arizona high country with turquoise walls and thick Navajo rugs. He texted the reservation to Michael and got a grinning emoji in return.

Then he went to the church and spent the afternoon in the sanctuary, oiling the hinges of the massive doors and in the attic, finishing replacing the fiberglass insulation with recycled jeans now the weather had cooled enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's La Mi Sola, Laureola: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWmsUKUwlPc
> 
> And here's the translation: http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/La_mi_sola_(Juan_Ponce)
> 
> I have no specific evidence it's from Juan de Ponce's time during the crusades, but he did fight in some of the crusades inside Spain against Muslim and Jewish Spaniards, and he didn't have a lot of other reasons to be locked-up, so since I learned this song in high school, it's been the story I tell myself about it when I sing it.
> 
> Erbil is in Iraq, in what might one day be Kurdistan. It is one of those places my friends who work for NGOs in the region always remind me is really safe. Alex was there training with Peshmerga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshmerga) in my headcanon.
> 
> Here's my source for how many Iraqis died in the war:  
> https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi
> 
> Here's a recording of "Donna, Donna" is the original yiddish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ovNmAVcdc
> 
> And the recording I grew-up on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1zBEWyBJb0
> 
> Here's translations of the lyrics, which are still in copyright so I won't copy them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dona,_Dona#Lyrics
> 
> Also, I am a blanket thief, sleeping and waking, so two blankets is really the only way anyone ever gets any sleep with me nearby. It's a trick I learned from one of the middle aged women I volunteered as a clinic escort with.


	12. what storm can shake my inmost calm

**3:45am, September 27th, 2020 [37 Days to the General Election]**

“This is Sergeant Jenna Cameron, is this Alex Manes?”

“Yeah — what?” Alex fumbled the phone between the pillow and his ear, trying to get the leverage to reach the bedside lamp.

“Max’s card is bouncing and we need to bail Michael out _now_. Can you give me your card?”

Alex froze at her tone, gripping the phone tightly.

“What?”

“Alex. Alex Manes. Right?”

“Yes?”

“Michael needs to get out of jail right now and I need to have a card on file to indicate his bail was paid. He always shows up for his court dates, you won’t lose any money, I just need a number from you.”

“What —”

“Michael. Is. In. Jail. If he stays here — Michael is in jail and ICE is on the way and I need your card so I can let him go and not get into a shit-ton of trouble.”

His brain finally caught up. 

“Of course, yeah, um,” Alex fumbled with his wallet where he’d left it in his pants: heaped beside the bed. He nearly overbalanced — _fucking leg_ — “Hold on,” he hissed and caught the edge of it, grabbing the card out and turning on his phone’s light.

He gave her the number.

“Ok, I’m opening the cell now,” Alex heard muffled through the speaker, “Michael? Michael are you good to drive?”

There was a groan.

Cam hissed: “ _Fuck._ Go sit in last cruiser on the left.” There was a jingle of keys. “And stay _down_.”

Her voice got louder as she came back to the phone.

“Alex, I hate to ask, but can you come get him? He can’t drive safely —”

“Um —”

“Look, I don’t know what you guy’s relationship is yet, but if you don’t want him deported, he needs to get out of here now. We’re not a sanctuary city. Some assmunch on the highway patrol already reported him as being in the jail — "

“Ok, ok, I’m coming — can I get the address?”

“I’ll text it to you. Hurry.”

Silence on the line.

\--

Alex did 90 on the highway to the station, pulling in to see two white American-made trucks idling in front of the entrance. Alex shoved himself out of his truck, hand stiff on his cane, only to see a tall beautiful blond woman trotting down the sheriff's department steps to him, shoving a set of keys in his hands.

“Good thing someone dropped your keys off, I’m sure that was a real scare,” she said loudly, glancing back towards the doors. Alex couldn’t see anyone, but her sharp blue eyes held him fast.

She whispered: “Drive around back, last cruiser on the left. Get him and go.”

She paused, shaking the tension out of her neck: “I owe you a cup of coffee, Captain Manes. Michael owes you at least breakfast.”

"Thank you, Sergeant --"

She interrupted, glancing behind her again: “I gotta get back in there. They’re ransacking the place, sure that we’re hiding him in a cupboard or under the Sheriff’s desk. Please go.”

Alex pulled his truck into the back lot where the three cruisers were parked. He found Michael in the last one, huddled under a blanket, the smell of whiskey coming out with him when Alex opened the door.

“Hey,” he said when he opened the door, “You ok to walk?”

“Yeah — are you sure —”

“The sergeant's keeping them busy. My truck is right here. You can hop in and we’ll be out of here in about 15 seconds.”

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

His voice was small and foggy with whiskey: “Where’s Max?”

“In Denver, I think.”

“I forgot.”

He sat-up, grey blanket shuffling off his broad shoulders. He had a split lip and a bruise around his eye and Alex couldn’t think much beyond that. He got him into the back of the truck, taking the blanket with them, and Alex pulled out, driving as carefully as he could. He nodded to the ICE agent sitting in the white Suburban and the man nodded back to him, eyes unknowable behind wrap-around Ray Bans. Michael stayed low in the back.

Alex’s hands were starting to shake with adrenaline.

“What the _hell_ Michael,” he started.

“I’m _so sorry,”_ Michael groaned.

“ _What the hell!_ ” Alex said, “If ICE is out for you, why would you get arrested?”

“I didn’t _mean_ to get arrested?”

“What do you mean you ‘didn’t mean to get arrested’? You’re _so drunk._ Why would you —”

He took a breath. “I’m not going to yell at you. I’m sorry for raising my voice.”

“I deserved it —”

“No! You don’t deserve it.” He took another breath. “If ICE is on to you, maybe you shouldn’t go back to your place.”

“No, it’s fine —”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go back to your place if they’re looking for you,” Alex kept going, “I know you have the bunker, but you’d be trapped down there if they come. Why don’t we,” he paused, trying to drag tactics out of his brain, “Why don’t we go to King David's. They’ve got a shower and a cot and an attic if it comes to that. We’ll wait until morning, give the Sergeant a call, see if you can go home.”

Michael's voice was still slurred: “I don’t have any clothes.”

“I can swing by your trailer and pick some up for you.” He paused, trying to make his voice as soft as he felt inside, force himself to drop his Captain Manes mannerisms, “Seriously, Michael, I think you’ll be able to make better choices if you sleep it off.”

Michael nodded, uncoordinated: “Would you stay? I just — I don’t want them to take me alone. If they take me, I want someone to know.”

“They’re not going to come into a church to take you. They have a rule, they don’t interrupt active services.” Alex checked the car clock, “Services start at 8am tomorrow. Today. We’ll just have to keep them from knowing you're in there until then and we’ll be fine.”

“Ok,” Michael said.

Alex glanced voer to see Michael was huddled-up against the door, his back a line of pure misery. Alex gripped one hand firmly on the wheel and drifted his hand over, saying softly: “I’m glad we got you away from them,”

Michael gave a tiny, pained nod.

“Is it ok if I touch you?”

He unfurled a little, looking at him: “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Alex shrugged one shoulder: “Sometimes when people are scared, they don’t want to be touched.”

A little bit of light came back into Michael’s eyes: “Alex, I don’t know if you know this, but there are literally no circumstances under which I don‘t want you to touch me.”

Alex slid his palm down Michael’s back and Michael took what looked like the first full breath he’d had since Alex had opened the cruiser door.

“Ok,” he said, “Ok. We’ll go to the church. Wait until morning. See how it goes.”

—

There was something especially haunted about a church at night. Alex opened the heavy red front door, ushering Michael in and locking it behind him. Inside, the darkness made lines of the pews became softer, their footsteps on the red carpet quieter. The moonlight threw muted shadows through the stained glass, marking its lines across the floor of the sanctuary, laying those same lines across their bodies as Alex ushered Michael towards the sacristy in the back, where Tony's vestments and the altar cloths and chalice were kept.

“Alright,” Alex said, “We can pull out the cot in here.”

“The cot’s in the choir room?” Michael said, still a little muzzy.

“Yeah, it’s in the back closet. Usually parishioners crash down there, but if they come in the front door, you'd have no way out. But here -- " he pointed to the ceiling where a high window showed an attic hatch and opener string dangling down, "If you hear them coming, pull on that. A ladder will come down, you can climb up into the attic and pull it up after you. Not a shelter per-se, not like a licensed one, but you know — sometimes people need a couple of days to get out of a situation, and sometimes abusers come looking.” He worked his jaw. "I fitted it out, there's solid plywood to walk on, and most of the fiberglass is covered."

“I didn’t mean to drag you into this,” Michael said, “I didn’t plan —”

“Hey,” Alex said, “Why don’t we talk about this when you’re not still drunk?”

“I need you to know --”

“I know you’d never mean to cause harm,” Alex said quietly, “But I also know things are going to be harder now.” He shivered, “I feel like something bad is coming.”

Alex pulled out his phone and sent a text to Tony:

> Alex: Hi padre, sorry for the late night text. I’m helping a friend crash here tonight. I promise I won’t make a habit of it, but I promise there’s a good reason. I’ll tell you at 7am when you get here?

He got a text almost immediately back: “Stay safe, Alex. Need me to come over now?”

Alex had already typed out “No” when he took a breath and felt Michael's arms against his, warm in the cool night. He sent:

> Alex: I hate to ask, but I don’t know what to do.  
> Tony: Sure. I’ll be there in 10. As long as you don’t mind me drafting my sermon as we talk.  
> Alex: That's fine, thank you so much.

Then there was a knock at the parish door. Alex froze, glancing over at Michael.

“Are you expecting someone?” Michael whispered.

“No.” Alex said. “I texted the pastor but he’d not going to be here for 10 minutes.”

“Is there anyone else who should be at the church at 4 in the morning?” lips barely moving.

“No,” Alex whispered.

“Ok,” Michael said. “So, it’s ICE.”

Alex said: “Tony is on his way. Once he’s here he might know what to do, but for now, get into the attic.”

“Ok,” Michael said. He looked-up at the 8-foot ceiling, to the hatch.

The pounding at the door got louder. Alex flipped on the video on his phone.

“Roswell police!” Came the shout through the hard wood.

“I’ll stall them until Tony gets here. I’m not going to let them take you.”

“You may not have a —”

“I’m _not_.” Alex said.

“Ok, they shouldn’t be able to force the door without a judge's signature,”

“We’ll see. I won’t let them take you.”

Michael’s face was a mask of fear and Alex pressed a kiss into his hair, making sure he got the ladder down before closing the locking the sacristy door behind him.

Alex limped down the center aisle, cane feeling less and less like an aid and something between a hindrance and a weapon.

The front doors were broad, thick. Alex stood on the other side, watching them shudder and creak as the men on the other side pounded them again.

“We have reason to believe you’re harboring a fugitive - an illegal alien. Come out! Now!”

Alex laid his forearms on the door, leaning against it, staying silent, phone still recording.

He paused the video, texting Tony: “I’m so sorry, I brought trouble to your door.”

Tony didn’t reply.

Alex turned the video back on again.

He wondered if he could Google — what, ACLU? Public defender? He didn’t know if they covered this kind of thing, the 4th amendment only covered criminal offenses and despite all the paramilitary bullshit of ICE, overstaying a visa was a civil issue, not a criminal one. _So no right to a lawyer._

_Would they have anybody on call this time of night?_


	13. while to that rock I’m clinging

**4:45am, September 27th, 2020 [37 Days to the General Election]**

9 minutes later, Tony’s voice was like sweet water after days in the desert.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

The pounding stopped and Alex tried to breathe, phone still recording.

“What — who are you?”

Alex could imagine Tony pointing a thumb at his collar: God, Alex hoped he was wearing his collar.

“I’m the priest of this parish. What are you doing on my church’s property?”

“Uh,” one of the men said articulately, voice stuttering into silence, his voice more used to shouting than speaking in human tones.

“I have a —”

The sound of crunching paper. _The administrative warrant_ , Alex thought, remembering the non-judicial pieces of paper ICE administrators handed out and called 'warrants' but which did not require anyone to comply with them.

Tony had been to the same Know Your Rights training as Alex had: “I don’t see a judge's signature —“

“We don’t —”

“ _You do in fact_ need a judge’s signature to get access to this building, or any other form of private property. And you’re not going to see anyone open the doors, not for you now, not ever. So you’d better go back to your HQ in Albuquerque and tell them that.”

The ICE agent's voice was a low growl: “You don’t want the kind of trouble we’re going to bring,”

Tony's voice rang through the thick doors: “You recording this, Alex?”

“Yes,” he called back, projecting hard.

"Alexander Manes? The tip said you would be an accomplice. You need to open that door before you lose your commission."

Alex was silent, still recording.

Tony's voice was sure and solid: “I’m just gonna sit here until the 8am service —” Through the crack in the door, Alex could see a body move, Tony leaning against the doors, putting his body between the agents and his church.

A different ICE agent's voice, something in it making Alex think he was trying to sound reasonable. _Good fucking luck_ , Alex thought. The man said: “Are you going to lock your parishioners out of their own parish for the sake of one illegal?”

There was the sound of a bic lighter, a rustle, and a slow sound of Tony taking a drag.

His voice was laconic when he said: “I can’t think of a better reason to hold our service outside.”

“Where will you get the wine?” Asked a higher voice; one of the quieter officers. “The host?”

“Well, there’s no transubstantiation in Episcopalianism, so I figure, if I really need to, I’m sure the Kwick E Mart has some Ritz crackers and grape juice I can ask one of the vestry to pick up for me. My congregation will be just fine with it.”

Another drag on his cigarette, “The question is, will your bosses be fine with me live-streaming this little encounter — or, better yet, calling the National Cathedral and asking them to let me live stream from their account; it's 7am on the East Coast, and the church office there should open at 7:30am." Tony said, playing up considering, "I think I'll do that. But between now and then, I’ve got a sermon to write. If you'll excuse me.”

And there was a sound, a pressure against the door, and Alex — he knew in that moment what Tony had done. He’d sat down on the nubbly concrete with all those tiny river stones embedded in it. There was the sound of a laptop unlatching and the gentle click, click, click of Tony’s worn fingers on the keyboard. Occasional pauses for him to puff at his cigarette. 

“You can’t just sit here all night,” came the gruff ICE officer’s voice.

Tony’s voice was distracted, “I can and I will. I waited for 37 hours to see the _Phantom Menace_. You can be darned sure I’ll be here until my 8am service.”

After long seconds, there was the sound of jackboots retreating. A few long breaths as Alex settled down his back against the door from the other side, when he heard Tony murmur through the crack: “They’re recovering their masculinity out in the parking lot, but they’re not going to stop. These kinds of assholes never do. Any chance you can get him out?”

“I would,” Alex whisered, “If I had any idea where to take him. My apartment isn’t any better than the church, and his trailer has this freaky basement thing —”

“A fall out shelter —”

“Yeah. A fall out shelter, how did you —”

“When you’ve been around Roswell as long as I have, it’s nothing really new. I mostly use mine as an extra library.”

“So, the thing about sanctuary —”

“It’s only really when there’s a service in session, yeah.” Tony’s voice was low. “I don’t think anyone in that group is senior or smart enough to know that, but tomorrow, or come Monday morning at the latest, we’re going to have to have another plan, because they’re going to realize this church is just another building. A public building at that.”

“I’m really sorry —”

“Alex,” Tony said quellingly, tone still low and quiet, “This is the moment I went to seminary for. This is the moment I’ve been preparing the congregation for. If we can’t risk something — our comfort, some small modicum of our absurd safety — to protect someone, then what is the fucking point? Of this? Or all of this? All of these parables about risking yourself for others, all of these lessons about welcoming the stranger — what is the fucking point if we don’t fucking _do it_ sometimes?”

Alex felt a heavy pressure behind his eyes, a warmth in his chest, but his voice was quiet: “What if,” he paused, “What if we held services?”

“Well, there’s the 8am -- “Tony added,

“No,” Alex said, voice trembling as he tried to get the idea out, “Continuously. So the sanctuary remained, well, a sanctuary.”

Tony paused. “Well, there's only so long I can run on Nescafe. But — do you think it matters if it’s this denomination?”

“I don’t see why,” Alex said, “We’ve hosted iftars and Passover dinners and Buddhist retreats — I think it’s the holiness, not the God, the fact that it is a religious service.”

“Hmm,” Tony said through the door, “Let me make some calls."


	14. since love is Lord of heav’n

**6:45am, September 27th, 2020 [37 Days to the General Election]**

It was 6:45am and Alex wished he’d had a more marketable social media life. He wished for it as desperately as he had wished for the clicking sound under his boot to be a stick.

Michael was going to get deported because Alex wasn’t interesting enough on Instagram.

He had no illusions the threat of a priest was going to hold ICE off permanently, or even until the 8am service. He knew ICE could decide to break in at any time; there was no service going and if they realized that, it was all going to fall apart. He had started a live-stream on his phone, hoping that the added internet attention would serve as leverage if ICE decided try Tony’s resolve with more than words. But so far, only 3 people were watching: Maria from the choir and two randoms. Nothing that was going to convince a BMT drop-out with a fashy haircut and a cut-rate tac vest to back off.

Tony was sitting, typing and calling people, back to the door. He’d said the ICE agents were sitting in their heated car, glowering at him, waiting for him to move. He’d said the National Cathedral was working through a plan. He’d told Alex half an hour ago that he’d rounded-up enough priest friends that they should be able to keep an active service going for the day, so even if the ICE guys got a judge to sign a warrant for Michael, they wouldn’t be able to come in and get him once they started.

If they got started. His leg jerked with tension and he said through the door:

“I’m going to check-in on Michael.”

“Make sure he has some water -- there’s snack bars hidden under the vestments.”

“‘Hidden under the vestments’?”

“What? You want a hangry priest? You want me snacking on the host, Alex?”

Alex shook his head, unable to smile but he knew, when this panicked fog lifted, he would be grateful for the attempt.

He must have been quiet too long, because Tony’s voice changed and it sounded -- well, not fatherly, because nothing good ever started with “father” for Alex. But he sounded like someone who might stand between Alex and trouble; like someone who might actually care.

“Go and check-in on your friend, Alex. I know he’ll want to know what’s happening.”

“Thanks, padre.”

“Like I said, this is what I went to seminary for. I’ll hollar if something changes.”

Alex got himself to standing, body shooting with pain not just at his stump or his tired legs, but everywhere. _Thanks, anxiety_ , he thought, as he forced his body to move, to stumble back towards the sacristy. He got inside, locked himself in:

“Michael?” He called towards the ceiling, “It’s safe for now, can I come up?”

“Alex?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Ok.”

Alex pulled on the ladder’s chord, letting it slide silently down. He was briefly, thoroughly grateful he’d oiled it a few weeks ago in a fit of clean-up and tidying. The hatch above him was pitch black, and he realized, with a pang, that Michael had been in the dark up there, alone. His phone was still at the station, since they wouldn’t have let it into the cell with him and he’d been bundled up so fast. Alex hoped he’d at least gotten some rest up there; but he doubted it.

Alex crested the top of the hatch and felt a hot hand on his elbow, letting him know where Michael was silently. Michael had the chord and hauled the ladder back up from inside the attic while Alex’s eyes adjusted to the light.

And then it was quiet, the two of them in the dusty darkness, Michael’s knee pressed against his, his breathing quick.

Alex tried to speak fast enough, to give him what he needed: “Tony, the priest-in-charge, he’s sitting in front of the door. He won’t let them in. The 8am service will start and then they won't be able to come in. Tony’s,” and he fumbled, hands needing to touch more of Michael and Michael’s fingers found his sliding across his palms, guiding them to his face, his shoulders, his sides, everything Alex needed to feel to know he was here; he was alright.

For now.

His voice was a cracked quiet in the midnight dark of the attic over the sanctuary: “He’s called-in his priest friends, they’ll be holding continuous services. He’s,” and Alex choked, voice falling apart and he _hated_ it, _hated_ not having control over it, not when Michael needed to know -- “He’s going to fight for you. He thinks others will too. We just need to keep you in here. Safe. In the church.”

And Michael made a broken sound and then his wet face was against Alex’s neck, his calloused hands banding tight around Alex’s ribs as his body shook. And Alex -- he knew. He knew how this went. How terror kept you strong and as soon as you had still and quiet and a graze of safety you lost the steel that fear brought into your spine.

“Oh, love,” he murmured as Michael shook, crying as silently as Alex ever had. His breathing was shallow and rushed and Alex -- he just trailed his fingers up and down the thin line of Michael’s spine, just let him shake apart within the bounding bands of his arms, let him define his space, his body’s dimensions by the scant space between them. He held him as he resumed his shape, as he reformed himself around his breathing, around his clenched fists in Alex’s shirt.

“I should have said,” Alex started, “I’m here. We’re here. You’re not going to be alone.”

Michael sniffed one more time and Alex gripped the back of his head, fingers lost amongst the curls. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

Long after Michael’s breathing had returned to normal, and Alex had started thinking through his thin Roladex of people he knew in Roswell, people who maybe had other congregations who could come and help, Michael spoke, low and quiet: “They’re still out there?”

Alex nodded. “They are.”

“And they’re not leaving?”

Alex shook his head: “No, they aren’t. I don’t think they will.”

“How --” Michael coughed, pausing, then starting again, “How long could this go on for?”

Alex took a breath: “There was a Dutch church that held services continuously for 3 months.”

“And then what happened?”

“The government caved. The family got to stay.”

A sigh, something like relief; an atom's worth of hope.

“Three months from now will still be the Trump administration, even if he loses. They could stay -- “

“Until at least Inauguration day, yeah, I was thinking that,” Alex murmured.

Michael gave a silent nod.

“Well,” Alex said, “I think it's like sight singing. We don’t know when the key will change, what the other parts are. We just need to stick to what we can see ahead while we try to manage what we have in front of us. And what we have in front of us right now is trying to get enough faith leaders lined up. And,” Alex paused, sliding a thumb across Michael’s stubled cheek, “We need to get you in a place you can eat and drink and rest.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I’m fine.”

Alex tipped his head to the side, neck still wet but saying nothing. “Well, I need a snack and some water. I’ve locked the sacristy and even if they bust in, we’ll have a warning. I’m going to go down, get you some electric candles, and some food. Will you eat something with me?’

“You should eat,” Michael said, as if reading from a script that was a little too far away for him to see.

“Yes,” Alex said slowly, voice soft. “Ok. I’ll be right back with it.”

He fumbled his hand into his pocket, unlocking his phone and handing it to Michael.

“I couldn’t call Max or Isobel because I didn’t know their numbers; but maybe you can, or at least email them --”

“I have two factor on,” Michael said, sounding like himself for the first time all night, “Without my phone, I can’t get into my email.”

“Hmm,” Alex said, “And you don’t know their numbers memorized?’

There was a huff of sound and Alex liked to think Michael was giving him an utterly sarcastic look.

“Yeah, I don’t have anyone’s number memorized either. How about -- we should be able to find their campaign emails?”

The feeling of curls moving across his face -- a nod.

“Ok,” Ales said, wrapping Michael’s hands around the phone, “Let them know what’s happening. Maybe they can help,” he kept to himself that Max _had better help_.

“I can do that,” Michael said, and Alex leaned forward, meaning to press a goodbye-for-a-minute-kiss to his cheek. But Michael must have turned his head, because he found his lips pressed against the other man’s. The feeling of his warm, soft lips, grounded Alex more than any words could. He pulled away before he could taste anything, push any boundary, but Michael was here, was safe; and he needed to keep him that way.

Alex worked his way back down the ladder, finding the snacks and a bottle of water and a box full of battery-powered votive candles stashed from a nighttime wedding Tony had officiated a few months before. The bride and groom had walked down and aisle lit only by these tiny, flickering candles, with LED lights sewn into the train and overskirt of her wedding dress and stuck as tie pins and cummerbund clasps for all of the groomsmen. It could have been tacky and weird, but to Alex, running the AV, it had looked like they were made-up of stars.

He tucked them all under his arm and made his way back up the ladder, leg twinging in a threatening way, but no less strong for what he needed from it.

Michael’s hand was on his elbow, guiding him up again, and he laid the candle box out, handing Michael the food and water, then beginning to methodically take out and click on every one of the candles.

The first time Alex saw Michael’s eyes in the growing low light, his heart tripped a beat. Even terrified, hung-over, and crouched in a church attic where they could only stand at the peak of the roof, he was still the most beautiful person Alex had ever met.

After Michael ate a snack bar and drank ⅔ of a bottle of water, his hands brushed Alex, collecting a half-dozen candles and beginning to light them, the soft _snick_ of the switch at the bottom of them ticking like a metronome. Each lit candle went in a widening circle around them both.

When there was enough light to not only see movement, but color, Alex reached across the distance between them.

“Will you be ok up here? I think you should stay until the services are going, just in case.”

Michael gave a full, strong nod.

“Yes,” he said and Alex -- he leaned across the gap, hesitating for a moment, deep in Michael’s space, until Michael’s fingers slipped up his front and took a gentle hold of his chin, closing those last few, impossible inches until their lips met again, chastely, but with the taste of connection,

Alex pulled back, seeing something more of Michael in his own face, something less of sheer, untouchable terror.

“Can you hang onto my phone for me? Livestreaming to Instagram isn’t doing much, and I think the more people who hear directly from you, the better.”

Michael’s hand was wrapped so tight around the phone, Alex didn’t think he could get it back from him if he tried. And he didn’t want to try.

“Ok,” He said, “I’m going to head down, reinforce Tony until the service starts. I’ll see you right after?’

“Alright,” Michael said. Then his hand shot out, pausing before slowly lowering to rest gently on Alex’s wrist.

“Alex, if something happens. I want you to know -- I think I love you.”

And Alex -- his heart jumped and cratered. This wasn’t what he’d wanted for that declaration, but it was also impossibly, improbably, utterly true.

“I think I love you too, Michael,” he said, voice harsh and caught in his throat, “And I want to fight for that.”

“Me too,” Michael said, leaning forward for a final, hard press of lips. “Me too.”

Alex walked back to the front door, lips tingling, and hands feeling warmer than they had since he’d woken up in Michael’s arms days before.

\--

Dawn was just peeking under the door when he heard the sound of thick boots on the pebbled sidewalk. But Alex didn’t hear Tony stand. He could have sworn he heard a sigh of relief.

“Sergeant Cam, it’s good to see a friendly face.”

“Father,” she said and Tony huffed. 

“Not Catholic, just Episcopalian. Tony is fine, or Reverend Chu if you need to.”

“Reverend, I think this belongs to one of your parishioners. He lost it in the station last night, oh, 3:30am? I thought he might be here for Sunday service.”  
  
There was a moment of quiet. “Do you charge all of your lost cellphones?”

If Alex could hear a shrug, he thought he might have done. “I thought he’d want to know how many people are looking out for him.”

She paused, and there was the sound of tires in the tired gravel of the sidelot where Alex had been planting peonies earlier in the year.

“Looks like there are some of them now. You ok with a larger than usual service, Reverend?”

Tony stood, and Alex could hear him dusting off his jeans. “I’m always ready for more parishioners.”

“They, uh,” And here a smile seemed to creep into Cam’s voice, “they might not be too familiar with the liturgical gymnastics. You might need to give them extra cues.”

There were the sounds of more tread, more gravel, and the low murmur of voices; a lot of voices.

“That’ll be just fine,” Tony said.

\--

The 8am service was standing room only. They ran out of programs immediately — Tony had only printed 5 the afternoon before: 4 for the regulars and one for luck.

Tony started his sermon: “I know why so many of you are here, and I thank you. This service is usually only about 35 minutes long, the kind of service you can pop into before a day of baseball practice or bridge,” a low laugh moved through the congregation.

“But, for reasons that will make sense to most of you, this service is going to be, in a sense, unceasing. There is a regulation, buried within the rules of the Department of Homeland Security, they never conduct an immigration raid on a place of worship with an active service ongoing. An active service is defined however that place of faith defines it. I’ve been here since 3am and the best definition my sleep-addled mind could come up with is Matthew 18:20: 'For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.'"

"So, as long as there are two or three of us here, plus Michael, we have a service ongoing. There is a sign-up sheet in the back, for people to take shifts. As you all know, we don’t take partisan stances here. But you’ll notice that the sign-up sheet has 6 hour shifts for every day between now and January 22, 2021. Inauguration Day. So, sign-up to take a shift, or several. I know I’ll be here as long as I can, and I believe,” he looked out over the crowd, and from his spot managing the AV Alex could see better than he could, two or three yarmulkes, and at least one taqiyah, “I believe we will have enough faith leaders to ensure that there is at least one of us present at all times, in case our friends outside decide that’s necessary.”

He took a deep breath: “I know this will be controversial, but it seems a day for it. Before this service started, I extended an invitation to our friends outside to join this or any service.”

There was a low sound, almost like a far-off roar from the crowd, but Tony held up his hands: “I’m serious about welcoming everyone. It says it on the sign. But we'll have a process. Just like we would do for someone with a past history of abusing children, or someone who other members of the congregation felt unsafe around. Each of those officers outside is welcome with an escort, and may participate in the worship without disturbing it. This is our rule for those with past offenses involving children and this is our rule for them.”  
  
That seemed to quiet those assembled.

“So, the reading for today,” and he started into what must have been his original sermon. He finished, 8:40am, and then immediately opened the service again, had the same reader go through the same three pieces, and then said with a smile: “We will now be passing the peace for an hour. Get to know your neighbors. And if you brought donations, I believe Rabbi Pascal has volunteered to take them to the shelter for those who've been bonded out of the concentration camps at the border.”  
  
Alex -- he didn’t know his heart could get so big.

He didn’t know how many people cared -- about Michael, about these issues.

But in passing the peace, he heard the same thing over, and over: “How dare they come for one of ours.”

Michael, for his flaws and his distances and his eccentricities, felt more like _theirs_ than the ICE agents did. Alex lost count of the number of people who came up to him and said, voices low: “I voted for the President, but I didn’t -- not in _Roswell_. Not like _this_.” Before shaking their heads and walking away.

It was Debbie who stuck with him most. She usually was about as reticent as he was about passing the peace, but instead, she marched right up to him, stuck out her purple manicured hand and said: "I signed up for six shifts this week. I'll see you later, Captain."

Tony had to send Cam out to get extra wine for the Eucharist and, true to his word, some people ended up eating host that, until it had been blessed, had born the name of Ritz Crackers.

No one seemed to mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the story of the amazing Dutch church who inspired this story: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30/europe/dutch-church-service-stops-deportation-scli-intl/index.html
> 
> And with apologies to E.L. Doctorow for nearly borrowing his quote about how to write a novel and making it about sight singing: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/53414-writing-is-like-driving-at-night-in-the-fog-you
> 
> When Tony mentions that everyone is welcome at the service, that's a reference to the tag line of the Episcopal church: https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/213/2012/11/Episcopal-church-welcomes.jpg It also means that anyone, regardless of baptism, can take communion, which is different than many other sects. PS: My deep irreverence probably started in my middle school years working in the church library of my Episcopal church which proudly kept several copies of "The Joy of Sects" on prominent display.


	15. and earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of real life happened really fast this week. Is this season hard for anyone else? It is not my specialty.

**11:45am, September 27th, 2020 [37 Days to the General Election]**

The third service of the day was just as full as the first two; the only reason it wasn't fuller is the building couldn't hold everyone, so the parish hall had turned into a holding area, with Maria and Rabbi Pascal setting up letter-writing tables for people to communicate with those in the camps, and the outreach workers from pretty much every NGO in Chavez County talking with people about how to help. Cam and others, in and out of uniform both, had been conspicuously present the entire morning.

For the third service, Tony passed off his role to Father Mendes from Santa Maria Virgen. During the processional -- "Come Thou Fount," always a favorite that everyone could remember -- he headed to the back where Alex was sitting with the AV equipment and said:

"Is now a good time to talk?"

Alex closed his eyes, squeezing the tiredness out of them, and then nodded.

"I mean with," and Tony pointed subtly upwards. Alex nodded again.

Together, they headed into the sacristy, Tony returning shucking his the vestments he was wearing over his jeans and XKCD t-shirt.

Alex called-up, the sound of the voices raised in song masking him:

"Michael?"

The trap door opened and the gentle light of the electric candles filtered down.

"After you," Tony said, gesturing for Alex to head up.

Alex settled next to Michael, arms pressed-up tight against each other.

Tony settled, forearms on his knees and looked between the two of them as they hauled up the stairs and secured the door together.

He took a breath and held his hand out to Michael: "Hi Michael, I'm Tony. I think we met at the concert?"

Michael nodded, voice quiet when he said: "Padre, I wanted to --"

Tony spoke over him: "If you're going to thank me, please don't. I'm doing the bare minimum here."

"That's not how a lot of people will see it," Michael said, voice a low rumble.

Tony shrugged: "I'm not in the business of caring what other people see things. I'm in the business of doing my best to do what's right. Now," he looked between the two of them, "This has been a shitty night for everyone."

Michael huffed a laugh and Alex felt a smile push against his lips; he'd gotten used to Tony's language but it wasn't new to him. He'd heard Tony cuss out a scorpion seven ways to Sunday when he'd found it taking a siesta inside his loafer before gently escorting the stinger-waving creature back to its natural habitat at the edge of the parking lot.

Alex saw Tony's smirk in the flickering electric light of the candles.

"The next bit of time -- whether it's 3 days or 3 months -- is going to be a trial. Mostly for the three of us, assuming our Alex is as steady in his attachment to people as he is to plants."

Alex felt a low flush move across his cheeks but nodded once, hard. He glanced at Michael and saw a look of soft wonder before he refocused on what the priest was saying.

"So, let's talk logistics. Michael, you will be safe here if I have to Red Bull it out and run every midnight service for 3 months myself. I'm expecting to get a rotation of retired priests in here after National Cathedral puts out the call. I've got 15 offers of beds for them to stay in -- because we've always had more priests than parishes and this gives them something good to do. You're going to be as safe as we can make you."

Michael bit his lips, working his jaw. Tony let him build-up steam to say what he needed to say: "I wish I wasn't a burden to you all here. I'm not used to," and he dragged his hand, hard, through his hair, 'I'm not used to being dependent."

And Tony paused, looking Michael over. "I don't think you are," he said, "Not if you don't want to be. Alex knows how much deferred maintenance there is to do around this place, and if your callouses are any indication, I expect you know how to fix things."

Michael nodded.

Alex jumped in: "He teaches the robotics club at the local high school."

Tony cocked his head, looking at Michael.

"Do you think they'd be willing to have the club meet in the Parish Hall? We don't get a lot of use on week day afternoons, so the space is free."

Alex looked to Michael who shook his head: "I don't know --"

Tony reached out a hand, then paused, putting it on the candlelit floor between them.

"I'm not here to give you advice, but I would expect this entire experience will be a lot easier to take if you get used to asking for help before assuming other people will say no. Give people a chance to surprise you."

He looked down, to where the music was starting again; Alex thought it was the opening chords of "Dona Nobis Pacem."

His voice was a little cracked when he said: "I know everyone down there has surprised the hell out of me today."

He shook his head, looking over the two of them.

"So, some ground rules." He put a serious look on. "Michael, we can set you up here or in the choir room. Which would you prefer?"

Michael looked to Alex and Alex though he saw him glance briefly at his leg before returning his eyes to Alex's. Alex shrugged; it was Michael's choice.

"I think I'd rather the choir room, if you don't mind, padre. It'll be quieter and easier to make a little bit more private."

Tony nodded.

"Alright, and," here he paused, and if Alex didn't know any better, he would have thought he was blushing. "So, without presuming too much, I assume you are, well,"

Alex narrowed his eyes, daring Tony to say something that would be a betrayal; Michael gave him the out -- "We're dating, yeah."

Tony smiled in slight relief: "Alright. And I don't know if you usually share a bed --"

 _Just the once_ , Alex thought, _just the perfect once_.

"But, Alex, you didn't go off an get married without telling me?"

Alex shook his head.

"So the church has a variety of opinions about premarital sex and while I'm not here to --"

Alex thought he was going to explode with second-hand embarrassment. "I wasn't planning on sleeping over or -- doing anything else. In the church. Tony." He said and he hoped to God he and Michael could find this funny later because it was a fucking trial right now.

"Ok," Tony said, with a much larger sigh of relief. "Ok, so. Michael. You don't need to come to any services. You shouldn't leave the building and you should stay where there are other people or behind a locked door, so they can't sneak in to get you. There may be ICE agents in the building --"

"I heard," Michael said, "They will always be accompanied?"

"At all times."

"I understand." Michael said.

Tony looked between them. "As for food and money, well, Alex knows we don't have a lot to spare --"

Michael held up a hand: "I have a month of MRE's in my bunker back home, if someone can bring them to me."

Tony continued: "But what I was going to say is, if you don't mind casserole, I bet we can set-up a rotation to get some hot meals in here. Actually," he paused, thinking. "I'm going to start a nightly stone soup supper."

"'Stone soup --'?" Michael started, but Tony waved his hand. "Alex has heard me tell this story before, he can fill you in afterwards. Anyway. When you feel ok coming down, we'll get you set-up in the choir room." His voice got quiet, "You should take your time. It's been a shitty day, like I said. Give yourself the time you need."

Then he opened the hatch, pulling the ladder down. He was a few steps down when he paused, looking between Alex and Michael.

"Thank you," he said gruffly, "For letting us be a sanctuary to you. It means -- it means a lot. To be given the opportunity. To help."

Then he hurried down the steps.

Once they'd pulled the ladder back up, Michael took one look at Alex and cracked up, muffling his laughter in the broad expanse of his forearm.

"I thought you were going to _die_ when he started talking about sex in the church --"

Alex huffed: "It just isn't --"

But Michael was lost to laughter and he felt the first real smile in 24 hours come across his face.

"Fine, it's silly. But Jesus," he said, shuddering, leaning against Michael's side. "I can't."

Michael nodded, wiping his eyes.

"I got a hold of Isobel and Max," he said, voice quiet. "They'll be here this evening. They said they'll work from Roswell for the next week. I think they," he paused, rubbing his palm over his face, "I think they want to make it a campaign thing."

Alex felt a flush of such rage he had to pull away from Michael lest it slop over onto him. He heard himself hissing, " _Is everything a game to them?"_

Michael paused, holding a hand out between them. Alex tucked his hands around his own waist, then after a long breath, met Michael's fingertips with his own.

"It might be," he said, "To them, politics is the game of being alive. But it also might be," and he paused, voice forcibly even, "It might help, you know? The extra attention. It used to be, ICE wouldn't deport anyone when there was enough attention. Then they stopped caring, started taking people, people Senators were supporting, people with decades as ER nurses and teachers. But it doesn't usually hurt either."

Alex shook his head: "This is so fucked."

"Yeah," Michael said, "Yeah it is."

\--

Alex was at Michael's place, getting his things, when Isobel and Max arrived. They had gone to their parents' place after dinner before he got back with a load of groceries. He and Michael spent the evening getting the choir room settled as something like a one-room apartment before he headed home, the sound of the tenth service of the day still ringing in his ears.

He had worried he wouldn't be able to sleep, had been wandering around his small apartment, wondering what he had he could bring to the choir room the next morning, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

It was Michael:

"Hey -- what's happening?" Alex asked, hating his cold professional voice, but as soon as he'd seen his name he'd been deep into a fear spiral.

"Nothing," came Michael's voice gentle and smiling, "I was heading to bed and I thought you might be too. And I thought -- maybe you'd like to keep me company?" there was a softness under his next words, "I don't know if I've ever slept better than when we were together, and I thought --"

Alex let out a breath, feeling his entire body relax. "Yeah, maybe we can just -- talk. Until we fall asleep?'

Michael's laugh was quiet; Alex could hear the sound of singing above him. "That sound perfect. Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are life!
> 
> Also, I thought I lived a fairly taboo free life but when my IRL friends said Michael and Alex should do the do inside the church my soul left my body. 
> 
> I cannot do it, my friends.
> 
> Cuddles; yes.
> 
> Kissing a little; yes.
> 
> But the sex? The first time sex?
> 
> No.
> 
> Jesus take the wheel, no.
> 
> That will have to be once they are not in a church.
> 
> Trust me, it will happen. You've read my other stuff. You know it will happen.
> 
> But jeez, not in the church.
> 
> #CalmDownIRLFriends


	16. how can I keep from singing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the reason why I wrote this fic can be found in this video of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington confronting homophobic protesters by singing "Make Them Hear You" from Ragtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmsy6w0r7q0
> 
> It gives me chills every single time.

**7am, September 28th, 2020 [36 Days to the General Election]**

Alex Manes woke-up to a knock on his door. He closed his eyes, hoping it was a package. It wasn't accompanied by screaming or pounding; no one was yelling "Roswell Police!" But it came again.

"Give me a minute!" He called out, letting his voice take on the brassy you're-going-to-hear-me-in-the-cheap-seats tone he usually tried to keep under wraps outside of musical gigs.

He considered answering with just his cane, but if it was ICE, or something related to Michael's situation, he wanted to be as mobile as possible.

So on went the sock, the prosthetic, the jeans over it. The knocking didn't come again as he pulled on his softest button-up, body feeling achy and tired even after a full night's sleep. His phone had died in the night, the call with Michael having gentled him to sleep. He plugged it in and went for the door.

On the other side was a tall man with a rough beard, dark hair flopping across his broad forehead.

Alex had only ever seen him on YouTube, but he knew him:

"Deputy Evans, I should punch you in the face."

Max Evans tapped his white Stetson against his thigh, eyes down on the dust-heavy carpet.

"Captain Manes, Michael said I could find you here."

Alex leaned a little more heavily against the door frame: "Have you apologized to Michael for putting him in the middle of this mess?"

"I haven't and I'm not going to," Max said, eyes clear and meeting Alex's levelly. "Michael's not the only one who ICE is going after. There are thousands, up to 12 million, more people just like him, living in fear every --"

Alex shut the door.

It was either that or actually assault the man.

He took a breath; he assumed Max was doing the same.

He went back to his room, sat on the edge of the unmade bed, and called Michael on his phone; he picked-up on the first ring.

"Max there?" Michael asked without saying hello.

"Yep," Alex said, glaring at the closed door.

He heard Michael give a thick sigh and something loosened in his chest.

"Sanctimonious ass, isn't he?"

"I slammed the door in his face." Alex said, unrepentant.

There was sound of delight from Michael's end: "I would have _paid_ money to see that, Alex."

There was a pause, then he kept going: "He has a plan. I sent him to you so he could explain it."

"I don't trust his plans," Alex started and Michael interrupted.

"It's the best call I can think of, and it's basically what Tony already suggested: keep the services going, bring national attention. But Max and Isobel would bring in the political side too. The more eyes on King David's --"

"He's going to _use_ _you_ , Michael," Alex hissed, heart smacking against his sternum, "Just like he _used you--_ "

Michael spoke over him, voice kind but firm: "He will. He does. But that doesn't make it a bad plan."

"You want me to listen to him?"

"Yeah," Michael said, voice soft. "I do."

"Ok. I'll let him in -- and I am not usually super judgy of people's families --"

"Oh, judge away with Max. I'm pissed as hell at him."

"Got it. I'll be over as soon as I'm done with him."

There was the sound of a chuckle on the other line: "I look forward to it."

Alex made his way to the door, taking nose breaths every few steps. He shoved the door open to find Max on his phone. The taller man quickly slipped it into his back pocket and Alex kept the glare on his face.

"Michael asked me to listen to your plan. I'm pissed at you on his behalf but if he thinks it will help, I'm all ears. Tell me how you're going to fix this."

\--

**8pm, September 28th, 2020 [36 Days to the General Election]**

Alex spent the day with Michael, evicting scorpions from the crawl space between the ceiling of the choir room and the floor of the church. There was a hatch in the closet that got them access to it and a corresponding hatch just about under Debbie's desk that had been carpeted over long ago. But Alex was a man on a mission, fully armed with an x-acto knife and hand crowbar. By the end of the day, Michael's make-shift apartment had two exits.

Dinner was a potluck, attendees and priests and some of Michael's students from the robotics club all bringing dishes to share. Marty spent the entire evening, heads-down with Tony, Max, and Isobel, going through the contact lists. Decades of regional Queer Chorus meet-ups meant Marty knew his fair share of connected people. Maria and Mimi had brought a case of wine to cover the increase in Eucharistic visitors and stayed for dinner.

After dinner, Alex and Michael, Mimi, Maria, Kyle, Max and Isobel went down to the choir room, pulling out a circle of chairs. Alex thought it looked like a war council; to Isobel and Max, it probably was.

Isobel looked at where Michael was tipping his chair back on its hind legs, holding his balance with a hand on Alex's shoulder.

Her voice was a light soprano and Alex saw how Maria's eyes followed her gestures: “So I never asked, how did you end-up in jail?”

Michael frowned, holding himself steady on two chair legs. His voice was a grumble when he said: “Oh; one of the fucking Long Brothers called 911 on his cellphone. He asked to get routed to highway patrol, since none of the cops in this town would believe him over me.”

Isobel narrowed her eyes: ”Did you hear him make the call?"

“Yeah. I was sitting there. Drinking --”

“Of course,” Max said, waving him on. Alex leveled a glare at him. Max ducked his eyes.

“Yeah, so I was sitting in what he apparently felt was his seat. So he looks me dead in the eye and he calls highway patrol and says ‘I’d like to report an illegal homosexual immigrant. I said ‘what the fuck did you say,’ and he repeats, ‘I would like to report an illegal faggy immigrant at the Wild Pony,’ and he gives the address.”

Alex watched a professional mask flow over Isobel’s face: “I don’t want to ask you, but it may be important. Did he actually say ‘faggy’?”

Michael tipped his chair back down, the legs clanking into the thin carpet with a dull _smack_. His body followed the motion, leaning forward to cover his face with his hands and took a deep breath: “Yeah. And you know how I feel about that word,” Alex looked over at Isobel’s face. And there was a look there -- a look he recognized from one of his rare games of hide and go seek. It was a look that said: _now I’ve got you_.

She held up a long finger, dialing someone on her phone: “Hi, Annabelle? I need you to pull the 911 tapes for Roswell New Mexico, Highway Patrol, September 27, between --” she closed her eyes to think, “11:30am and 3:30am, coming from that dump of a bar -- “

“It’s not a dump.” Maria interjected, leaning towards the blond woman.

Isobel shot back without breaking her stride: “That place is more disgusting than a Senator’s sex life. And I’d know. But we’ll leave that aside for now." She refocused on her call: "I need the 911 _tapes_ , not just the transcripts. The audio. I know if you FOIA it it might take 3-6 weeks. But if you just go, in person -- yeah. Get it right to Samantha in Kyrsten's office; she's on Homeland Security and Gov Ops. Thank you.”

She took a breath:

“What the hell was that, Iz?” Michael asked.

She snapped her fingers like she was thinking.

“Stories are more powerful when they touch specific constituencies. The immigration angle, that one is easy. But, New Mexicans like to think they’re inclusive of queer folks. And you were targeted, by ICE, because you were queer --"

“It’s because I don’t have papers --”

She held up a palm, fresh manicure glinting in the overhead florescents: “Really? You see them going after everyone else like this? There were 5 cars with 5 men each in them outside in the parking lot when I last checked; that's at least $10,000 of overtime so far. No. There’s something personal about this. I don’t know if it’s Wyatt Long, or something else, but it’s something.”

“I don’t get it -- why does it matter?”

She put on a formal voice, gesturing with a closed fist like she was at a congressional inquiry: ”’Mr Secretary, I have an audio transcript of a report being made to your law enforcement hotline. Was that shared with you before the committee meeting?’” She affected a prim, prissy voice: “Yes,” Back to her normal voice again: “‘In this transcript, you will find a person who is being undocumented targeted because he is a member of the LGBTQ community.’ --- ‘Because he lacks status’ -- ‘Because he lacks status _and_ is a member of the LGBTQ community --’” 

\--

**11am EST, September 30th, 2020 [34 Days to the General Election]**

> C-SPAN Host: We are now rejoining the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's hearing on ICE deportation procedures where acting Secretary for Homeland Security Chad Wolf is being questioned by the Junior Senator from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema.
> 
> Senator Sinema: A little before midnight on September 17th, 2020, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, received a mandated referral from the New Mexico Highway Patrol. ICE then responded in --
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: 25 minutes --
> 
> Senator Sinema: What is their usual response time to tips on this hotline ?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: 3 days,
> 
> Senator Sinema: Interesting. ICE responded near lighting speed to a report of a queer undocumented person. 
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: He had been made known to them before.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Really. In what capacity was he made known to them?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: A report.
> 
> Senator Sinema: An anonymous report?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: No.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Who was the report from?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: It is not the policy of the Department of Homeland Security to publicly release the names of --
> 
> Senator Sinema: He seemed to have no problem doing so himself on Fox and Friends this morning. What is his name, sir?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: Sergeant Harlan Manes.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Active Duty US Air Force?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: Correct.
> 
> Senator Sinema: So. There is an individual who lacked status. And aside from a few disorderlies on Saturday nights, he has no felonies --
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: He is a felon.
> 
> Senator Sinema: As is anyone without papers, because technically all undocumented people ‘felons’ even when all they did was overstay a visa -- or live with parents who overstayed a visa. It is title without meaning and without merit.
> 
> Senator Sinema: ICE responded near instantaneously to the second report.
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: I don't know if --
> 
> Senator Sinema: They received a report. They responded. And then --
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: He was bailed out before they arrived.
> 
> Senator Sinema: By who?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: Captain Alex Manes.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Is that a common name in New Mexico or is Captain Manes related to the first reporter?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: I believe Captain Alex Manes is Sergeant Harlan Mane’s biological brother.
> 
> Senator Sinema: We have a recording of that first report. It is being entered into the record, but in short, Sergeant Manes discovered this individual's status based off of coverage of video of a political rally where the individual's brother spoke about his experiences in a mixed-status family. Focusing again on the specifics of this case because they are indicative of the politicization and misuse of taxpayer resources that characterize ICE's enforcement of federal immigration law: what is the relationship between Alex Manes and Michael Guerin? Because that’s who we’re talking about. Michael Guerin.
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: I can't speak to that.
> 
> Senator Sinema: I spoke with Mr Guerin this morning and can report he and Captain Manes are dating. So. A man reports his brother's boyfriend for being undocumented after hate-watching a political candidate's rally. Then a drunk at a bar reports him a second time. ICE descends nearly immediately. The man is bailed out. ICE then follows him to a church, where he has been given sanctuary and where they have been staked out for 3 days.
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: Correct.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Why was Mr Guerin singled out for this special treatment? I have a theory, if you'll bear with me. You’ll find a common same phrase in Sergeant Mane and Mr Long’s reports. “A faggy illegal.” Secretary Wolf, is it fair to say your department was used to target Michael Guerin for the personal bigotries of two men in Roswell, and that you have, to date, spend over $25,000 of US Taxpayer dollars on this operation, including overtime pay?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: I don’t have the numbers in front of me. He was detained because of his status, but it appears that, yes, from the record, those who reported him to us did so for personal reasons.
> 
> Senator Sinema: Have your agents spent 3 days staking out any other person?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: there are some very long operations --
> 
> Senator Sinema: Any other non-violent offenders?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: No. Not currently.
> 
> Senator Sinema: What will it take for Mr Guerin to be able to go home?
> 
> Acting Secretary Wolf: A change in federal immigration law or Department of Homeland Security policy.

\--

**9am, October 2nd, 2020 [32 Days to the General Election]**

The first bus had been black and slick and was now absolutely covered in dust. Marty practically frog-marched Alex out to meet it with him. Out trooped a group of men in neon green shirts, clean-cut and serious-faced. Marty met a man with "Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC" on his green t-shirt an outstretched hand.

“Brad,” he said, with a smile.

“Marty,” he said, “It’s good to see you in person.”

“You too,” Marty said. 

Brad’s face sobered: “So, I hear you’ve got a singer in trouble.”

“That I do.”

Brad gestured to his group: “We came to help.”

Alex made eye-contact with the ICE agent leaning against her white Ford SUV; she was on the phone, careful bun fraying at the edges.

 _Good_.

Kyle Valenti was inside, having had the day off. He'd offered to help however help was needed, so Alex handed the chorus over to him so he could get them settled into their warm-ups in the back of the church while a Universalist Unitarian minister was giving her sermon to her small congregation at the front. Then he went to find Michael.

He was helping Debbie update her virus protection software; well, Debbie was on a smoke break while he tried to wrestle her Windows 2008 computer into submission. But he paused when Alex came through the door:

“Is that the cavalry?” Michael asked, looking towards the sanctuary.

Alex nodded, stepping closer, quirking a smile: “Well, less racist than the cavalry, I hope. But yeah. There’s our reinforcements.”

Michael’s voice was quiet, soft, almost unhearable beneath the brassy tenors practicing on the other side of the wall, hand mussing his hair as he leaned against the desk, piled high with papers: ”All this. All this for me. they don’t even know what I look like, Alex. They could think you’re me. They have --”

Alex stepped closer, ducked his head into Michael's shoulder.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “They’re here for them. They’re here because they want to make a stand. To say, in this time and this place, I stood _here_. _Here_. Between force and freedom. Between people who love and people who hate. _Here_ is the line. This far and not one inch further.”

“But I’m just--"

Alex heard Kyle's voice come from the doorway.

"Michael, it's not about you."

Alex frowned at where he was leaning against the entrance to the doorway, but then he saw Michael was looking at him. For all their teasing, Michael had known Kyle for a lot longer than Alex had, and if he was listening, Alex would too.

"Did I ever tell you why I started working at the ER?" Kyle said, and Michael paused, looking at him funnily.

“What?”

"I was going to be a brain surgeon," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and sidling into the office, eyes steady as he talked. "I was going to be Dr McSexy. But then --"

He looked to the side. "It wasn’t a normal thing, in my family, to care about undocumented people. We came here legally and it was -- is -- a big point of pride. A point of distinction. Part of our code. It's something the Sheriff still holds against people who came here without status, though she does everything she can within the law to protect the folks in Chavez County from ICE."

He took a breath. "In undergrad, in the summers, I taught at this after school program where my Mom volunteered. A normal program. Working with kids of day laborers; great for the med school applications. I mostly coached basketball and football, just for-fun stuff during the summers, free day care, basically. There was this little girl. Mariela. She was always bright and shining, smiling and running around, doing cartwheels when I was trying to run drills. And so we would practice doing drills _of_ cartwheels, we’d do drills _of_ push-ups- - anything to wear her out. And one time,” he paused, taking a breath, backing up a little.

"The entire community center was this little cinder-block building with a bit of grass and a rotted-out asphalt half-court. It was always full of life and light and tax classes and self-defense classes and free food and all this stuff. Anyway. My Mom was volunteering with me that day, tutoring math; this was when Dad was Sheriff, before the cancer. That day, Mariela wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t running around or doing cartwheels. Right in the middle of 3-point drills, she just started -- crying. I thought she might be hurt -- I’d seen her fall off a slide and bounce right back up. Kids at that age, they’re just like rubber."

"But she was crying. And so I sent her to Mom, so I could take care of the other 20 kids in my class. And she crawled into my Mom's lap and she was just, sobbing, just, crying her entirely little 7 year old heart out. And she was sobbing and sobbing and my Mom was comforting her and as soon as I could, I went over to try and see what happened, to see if she was safe to go home, if someone had hurt her at home, and my Mom --"

He paused. He tried to keep his face straight, but there was something massive, something terrible running under the surface.

He kept control over his voice, but barely: "My Mom whispered that Mariela’s dad had been deported and they knew where he was being held at the detention center in Aurora before being shipped to Mexico, but they couldn’t go say goodbye. They couldn’t go and check on him to make sure he was ok, because Mariela's Mom didn’t have status and if she went they were afraid that her Mom would be taken too and she would be left here all alone." He took a hitching breath and Michael and Alex moved together, hands going to Kyle's shoulders, trying to ground him in the here-and-now. His voice was ragged as he said: "She just wanted her Dad. Didn’t want him to leave, wanted him to be able to stay, to be her Dad. But she knew she couldn’t go to see him until she could travel alone, when she was older, that they couldn’t go to Mexico to see him, couldn’t be near him, couldn’t even hug him goodbye, because ICE had come to take him."

Alex glanced over at Michael, saw his eyes were wide, tears brimming in them. Then Michael's arms were around them both, and Alex -- he didn’t know why, but his eyes were leaking and his breath was hitching and his arms were loose at his sides as Michael held them together, as Kyle's body began to quake, just a little tremor to start with, and then it was a jerk, a uncontrolled motion and Alex saw fear flash in his eyes, like he didn't know why his body was moving, and then another jerk, his shoulders moving, hitching and heaving an he was gasping, gasping it out into Michael’s neck, his entire body moving it, and he was sobbing silently, joints and bones and muscles fighting each other for dominance, fighting for a control that had slipped away.

Slow as breathing, it came back. Kyle snagged some of Debbie's purple-tinged tissues and dried his eyes. He huffed a self-depreciating laugh and said:

"So, that stuck with me. And over and over again, when I had a choice, I chose specialties and residencies and internships where I was working with people without status, people left behind by our immigration policy. People like Mariela."

He cleared his throat: "I know I have a different experience than you do. You're living it while I'm just visiting. But I want to help. I've been wanting to help, I just -- I didn't know how to. But I'll be here as much as I can. This matters to me."

Then his earnestness cracked, and Alex knew it was coming before he could open his mouth: "And, anyway, if you end up in a white van going to the border and then on a plane to Rio or wherever, who am I going to fight for the best solos?"

And Michael -- for once -- didn't rise to the bait. He just tugged Kyle in for another hug, Alex pulling back, giving them some space. He overheard a _Thanks, man_ , and then Michael pulled back, smile quirked.

He patted him on the shoulder: "Let's go see how our reinforcements are doing."

\--

Each of the 50 singers from the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington had brought a 3 hour solo set they were prepared to sing through; the choir itself had brought a dozen songs and immediately began buzzing in the sanctuary, setting-up their mics and cameras and everything they needed.

“Where are the streams going?” Alex asked Brad as he helped tape down some of the cables as they stretched in perfect lines across the sanctuary.

Brad flicked a slightly crooked smile at him: “Everywhere.”

And they did.

\--

**4pm, October 3rd, 2020 [31 Days to the General Election]**

Sam Tsui’s YouTube channel: “The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC has begun a 1-week residency at the King David’s in Roswell, New Mexico. You might know Roswell from their famed 1948 UFO crash, but President Trump has been attacking the town as harboring a different kind of aliens -- undocumented people. Now, as you all know and I hope agree, it’s rude and unkind to call people without papers ‘aliens,’ but that’s the legal and technical term. There is a young man there, a mechanic who’s lived nearly all his life in Roswell, who has been living in the church sanctuary for the past week after being targeted by ICE. He had been an active member of the Roswell Queer Chorus before ICE targeted him. Click in the link below for a quick video of his choir singing the solo their choir’s theme song -- “How Can I Keep from Singing.”

"Anyway, the rule is that ICE cannot interrupt an active religious service. So for the past week, local religious leaders in Southern New Mexico has been taking shifts -- Muslims and Jews, Christians and Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs, they’ve all been taking their turns. But there’s only so much one corner of the country can do. So the queer chorus of Washington has stepped in to fill the gap. As long as the service is being presided over by a religious leader, it’s just, like, a really long church service? I guess?"

"Anyway, I’m going to be co-hosting their stream for the next week, along with a lot of the other queer singers on here."

\--

**8am, October 4th, 2020 [30 Days to the General Election]**

The morning scrum started the next day.

At first, it was just the local podcaster Alex had seen at Crashdown, who Marty had told to meet him outside rather than disturb the services inside. The next day, with Isobel’s rolladex and Max’s photogenic face, it was him, plus a stringer from Univision. Max’s ability to give perfect quotes in Spanish, Portuguese, and English made sure Telemundo sent their stringer along as well. Then the local FOX affiliate came in in her Prius from Sante Fe and the next day there was a Buzzfeed reporter, down from Missoula.

“I cover pretty much anyplace people from DC or New York want to know about, but don’t know how to get to,” she told Alex cheerfully as she looked at her notebook, waiting for Isobel to get started. She made a point of standing in front of Alex's rainbow of peonies, every single time, so every shot of her had them in it.

And after the third day, it was a morning media circus. 

Isobel seemed -- really calm about it, Alex thought. Like this was --

“I think it was all her plan." He muttered to Michael as they prepped materials in the choir room for that afternoon's Robotics Club. "This --” he jerked his thumb towards the sanctuary, where the upper hall was filling with press for that afternoon’s Gay Men's Chorus of Washington concert.

Michael shrugged: “I mean. Not a single one of those press guys is going to stand between me and an ICE agent. But if it helps get the White House changed, that is what might do it.”

Alex shook his head: "How do we know if the Democratic candidate will do what Max said? Actually abolish ICE?”

“Well, then that’s a good question,” Michael said. He held out his phone, tapping something.

Isobel burst in the choir room door, shaking her phone in Michael's face: “You can’t!” She hissed, looking over her shoulder.

Alex grabbed her phone as she rounded on Michael: it was a screenshot of a drafted post for Michael's new Instagram account: a selfie and the question: _Does anyone know if the Democratic candidate has committed to #AbolishICE? Asking for -- well, you know._ Michael had sent it to her and Max. Max was typing something.

Michael shrugged: “Then tell me the answer.”

She threw up her hands: “It’s so much more complicated than that! It’s not a universally-popular position, they still need to get the majority of electoral votes, not just --”

Michael shook his head: ”They could have me in a white van to the border anytime, Iz. I'm as serious as cancer about this. If I’m going to be part of their election sideshow, then I need to know."

Max's Signal message came through: “I texted their scheduler; Michael, you’ll have 15 minutes on the phone with the candidate this evening.”

Alex interrupted her, showing her the message. Isobel’s eyes grew were massive.

“He _didn’t_. Max!” She shouted and Alex winced. He heard Max's footsteps on the stairs to the choir room.

Alex looked from him to Isobel; so far, they had been an indivisible team. But this seemed to have put daylight between them.

"You can't just impose on the candidate like this --"

Isobel started but Max frowned: ”Michael’s right, Iz. If they’re going to benefit from using him as an example of the human cost of this, he deserves to know their true opinion,” There was a twinkle in his eyes when he turned to Michael, “I think you’ll like them.”

\--

5:15pm that night, Michael sat in the choir room as the concert went on above their heads. Alex sat beside him, Isobel and Max watching from folding chairs across from Michael's cot. Together, they watched as Michael's phone rang on his knee with an unfamiliar number.

“Are you going to answer it?” Alex asked. Michael nodded, letting it buzz one more time.

“It’s probably rude to --”

“Hello? This is Michael Guerin,” Michael said.

Tinnily and distantly over the line, Alex heard the voice of the Democratic nominee for president.

Michael interrupted their small-talk about Max and Isobel being assets to the campaign with: “I had a question I needed to ask you,” Michael said, hand gripping Alex's so, so tight. Alex braced for it, “Will you abolish ICE if elected?”

And Alex heard it, as clear as day: “Yes. It will be my first act.”

And Alex's heart was rushing, crushing in his ears, his blood trying to escape his veins it was moving so fast. He’d never --- he’d served people with that title, with that power, for a third of his young life, but he’s never so much as spoken to a city councilmember. They had always seemed so -- small, venal, compared with the military giants he’d been raised on. All compromises, no code.

But there wasn’t a military solution to Michael’s problem. Only a political one.

For an intense, heart-rending moment, Alex felt incredibly, incomparably grateful, that Max and Isobel’s lives had left them so prepared for this moment, with these contacts, these understandings, these relationships. Because he was at-sea. He had no idea how to navigate this. But here Michael was, talking to the future president, thanking them for their advice and pushing them to focus on why it mattered that ICE be abolished: that no other developed democracy in the northern hemisphere had a paramilitary immigration enforcement division, that immigration violations were a civil matter, that the path to citizenship was more a series of parkour jumps across chasms than a viable option.

Then he heard them say: "If you don't mind, let me give you some advice. A lot of people right now need you to be a symbol, to be something they can construct their arguments on, their call outs, our GOTV campaigns around. You're our October Surprise. You’re going to be something by some people's estimation that's so much bigger than you've ever been." They took a breath. "And then it will end. It always ends. There’s only two kinds stars in media stories: rising stars and falling stars. That’s it. That’s all there is. The press will be there, talking about you, you’ll be famous and then, if you don’t do anything to sustain it, you’ll be -- in six months, a year, assuming we win. In six months, you'll just be a guy. A normal guy from Roswell. You don’t have to let this be about you, if you didn’t want it to be." There was a sound of a dry chuckle across the line. "Don’t get famous, Michael. It’s a terrible way to live."

And then -- it was done.

Michael said: “Thank you,”

And hung up the phone, staring at where it lay in his hand. Then he dropped it on his cot, turned to Alex, and buried his head in his shoulder, body shaking with nervous laughter, hands tight on his back, holding each other together, holding each other up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually know if highway patrol in New Mexico is mandated to report status, but given that New Mexico is not a sanctuary state, nothing is stopping a highway patrol 911 operator from making the report herself. That's the mechanics of how sanctuary status works: it keeps state law enforcement from doing federal law enforcement's dirty work, adds the kind of friction that keeps people from getting deported.
> 
> Senator Sinema's point about the term "felon" is valid -- what I learned in my Rapid Responder training is that because violating immigration laws is a federal offense, the mere act of being without status can be termed a "crime." Which is why when ICE does raids, they say they arrested "X # of felons." Most people without status have no convictions and have committed no crimes.
> 
> In happier news: Senator Kyrsten Sinema sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and is a bisexual icon (she's the first openly bi person in the US Senate, elected in 2018). She's great.
> 
> And I happen to love Sam Tsui's mashups, which is why I included him in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ380x7qnvE
> 
> And yes, the Buzzfeed reporter is Anne Helen Peterson, because I stan her.
> 
> Update: Thanks to Renelf for the correction about Australia having something like ICE; I added the phrase "northern hemisphere" to Michael's conversation with the Dem presidential candidate, so folks don't come away with the wrong impression. Thanks for the correction!
> 
> Comments are life! Thank you so much to everyone who is reading this, I really appreciate all of you.


	17. amazing grace [When tyrants tremble sick with fear]

**October 14th, 2020 [20 Days to the General Election]**

And then, as all things eventually do, it settled into a bit of a rhythm.

Isobel handled the morning scrum, relationships with musical groups, political logistics. Max took over the schedule, giving Tony his life and parish back, coordinating who would come to hold services, who would come to sing, with Tony having the final veto.

In the first week, Isobel had had this brainstorm, and asked one of her friends from the LA media world to bring a full recording set-up. He took off 3 months from his regular studio job, brought all his gear in the back of a truck, and turned it into a daily podcast, _Sounds From Sanctuary._ It quickly became the most popular music podcast on iTunes. And every episode ended with information about how to join or donate to each group and where to buy the songs themselves. Anyone who thought of filing copyright performance claims against the performances quickly found they could get more downloads with honey than takedown requests.  


Max arranged a tour of Black churches for a week, starting off with Richard Stinson's group from Albuquerque; smaller, Orthodox churches that could bring 1 or 2 people filled in the gaps. People were coming from all over; Max arranged a series of Roadtrip Canvasses, where people would knock doors every day of a road trip to Roswell, registering voters and connecting with people in rural areas who'd never seen a political canvass in their lives.  


Alex had his last official day as an Airman and celebrated by buying a massive Safeway cake and eating far too much of it, Michael pressed into his side and Maria and Isobel getting into a frosting fight in the early hours of the morning. Alex had good savings, a reasonable pension, and enough to get him through January. 

Alex came up with a rhythm too. He would come by, start the morning working the garden. On Saturdays, he went to cuss out his father’s grave first. 

Then he and Michael would work on some kind of project. One day, they were taking apart the pews and oiling the screws so they didn’t scream when people sat down on them. Another, they cleaned all the windows, some of them being cleaned perhaps for the first time since they’d been installed.  


Another they spent the day writing thank you notes to people who had done good, hard work for the church. Michael was in such a good mood after, Alex wished, not for the first time, they could just -- go. Get gone. Get some time with each other. To themselves.

Alex would go and make dinner at his apartment, bring it back to the evening potluck -- which Tony kept calling the Stone Soup Suppers -- of whoever had been sharing the sanctuary that day.

And they would sit and talk.

Then he and Michael would sit, watch some non-political TV. Alex had gotten Michael into  _ Big Dreams, Small Space _ , with Monty Don.

(Michael had been a little bit jealous of the attention Alex had shown Monty Don and his ludicrous overalls, until he got it -- “It’s the curls isn’t it. He’s what you think I’ll look like wen I’m old?”

Alex had nodded, blushing and Michael had settled down.)

Then Alex would kiss him goodnight, head back home to his apartment, call Michael, and go to sleep.

It was funny how many things could become routine.

Part of the routine Michael didn’t see were how the ICE agents glared at Alex from behind the windshield of the van they kept in the parking lot at all times. How the people at the grocery store gave him the side-eye.

He started to get hatemail to his apartment in the first week. He didn’t know who had doxed him, but after the first letter, when Maria asked him for the 10th time how she could help, he asked point blank: “Will you open my hatemail for me? Identify if there’s any actionable threats?”

She’d said yes.

So, every day, he handed over a box full of letters, where Michael couldn’t see.

It sucked. Of course it did. But it wasn't the worst thing either Alex or Michael had survived.  


\--

**October 15th, 2020 [19 Days to the General Election]**

The tweet came at midnight, as it was always going to have to.

> To the ILLEGAL ALIEN hiding in the church BASEMENT. STOP evading law enforcement. Chuches aren’t built to protect criminals. Go back to Brazil!!!

It ratioed in about 3 minutes and Alex swiped out of the app and deleted it for good measure, but not before screenshotting it.

He closed his eyes. Counted to 30. Then he texted Max: 

> Alex: I think we’re going to need another volunteer or five to handle the hate mail.
> 
> Max: You think with all of those fancy schools his parents were paying for, they could have taught him how to spell. I swear to god. It’s fucking embarrassing.
> 
> Alex: Yeah
> 
> Alex: and scary.

\--

The next morning, Alex was up on the highest ladder, Michael holding him steady, fixing the connection of the microphone Isobel's LA friend had brought; one of them was fritzing and he’d offered to help fix it. Below Alex, a choir from Atlanta was warming up while a small Methodist service was wrapping up.  


“Where does the wiring run?” Michael asked as Alex swore and worked to get the cables to connect properly.

“Through the attic,” Alex answered off-handedly.

“Why don’t we work on it from there? Might be a little more stable.”

Alex looked down at him again.

“I didn’t think you’d want to go up there.”

Michael shrugged, “That’s not the kind of thing that bothers me.”

“Ok,” Alex said. He worked his way down the ladder, steps confident knowing he had someone to brace him if he slipped.

“You know the way,” he said, and took Michael around the Sikh group worshipping at the front to where a long chord hung from a high ceiling hatch.

“After you.”

“You just want to watch me climbing.”

“Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave,” Michael said happily and Alex shook his head at him before pulling the chord and letting the ladder descend.

They used their phones to navigate to about where Alex thought the mic needed to go. He pulled his battery-operated power drill off his tool belt, checked for electrical wiring, and then drilled a small hole in the ceiling. They got the power going, tested it, found it worked, and then -- just stayed up there. Just for a few minutes.

Michael settled his shoulders against one of the two-by-fours that served as the roof supports and Alex tucked himself against his chest. It was dark, the sound of quiet prayers beneath them. It was the first time they’d had just the two of them, in-person, and Alex braced his hand on Michael’s knee, feeling the shape of him, real, solid,  _ there _ .

Michael started humming, whisper-singing the words.

> “Frondi tenere, e belle --”

In the near-darkness of the light tricking up through the hatch, he felt Michael lean back a little more, laying back, body loose and easy on the plywood, as stretched out and sung the lines. Alex stayed seated, watching him, mouth drying and mind carefully controlled.

Alex knew this song, mostly from weddings he’d sung at. It was a popular one. The times he’d tried to translate the Italian, he’d gotten -- quite confused.

When he finished the verse, he sat beside where Michael lay, a hand settling gently on his arm:

“You know,” he said in the quiet of the attic, “I’ve sung that, a bunch of times, I don’t actually know what it means.”

And Michael -- he cracked up. Just a little bit, but there were lines of laughter rolling across his body, and it made something, something special, curl in Alex’s stomach, to have made that change, to have made that sound come from him.

He started to sing:

> “Gentle branch, beautiful, of my favorite plane tree, resplendent in fate. Thunder, lightning, and storming, shall never take your perfect peace, nor winds take your quiet.”

Then he took a deep breath, belly rising as his lungs filled to capacity, voice still low:

> “Oh, pretty tree, so big and pretty, you are, a tree, a tree, to me. Oh, pretty tree, so shady and pretty, you are, a tree, a tree, to me! A tree to me.”

And Alex fell across his chest, body cracked with silent laughter. “That is  _ not _ an accurate translation,” he gasped.

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not literal, no, but when you’re learning arias or oratorio like this one, you learn the meaning of each word, the meaning of each phrase, but also the meaning of the  _ song _ . And those are all very, very different things.”   
  
Alex felt his hand glide through his hair, fingers gentle on the strands. “You know where it’s from?”

Alex shook his head. “It’s a song King Xerxes -- this trans or genderqueer Persian king. The one  _ The 300 _ made look so terrible for liking make-up and jewelry --”

“That movie was such a homophobic piece of shit. It went through my platoon like bad meat, leaving shitty opinions and sayings everywhere it went,”

Michael nodded. “But in the song, he’s this powerful guy and he’s in love, and Handel was sufficiently repressed, he couldn’t make it a love song to another man, though that would be the most historically accurate for him; so he makes it to -- a plane tree.”

“What’s ‘a plane tree’?”

“Well, it does not grow natively in Iran or here, that’s for sure. It’s an English tree -- big and tall and straight and with this wide leaves. It’s a really lovely tree -- well, at least it look like it on Wikipedia.”

Alex nodded. Their phones were face down, and the attic was quiet, the service below mostly silent. Suddenly, it was just him and Michael’s breathing in the shared space and he -- 

“Whether this is all over on November 3rd or January 22nd, they can’t come fucking soon enough,” Alex mumbled, burying his face in Michael chest. He felt his hand stroke once, strong, down his back, before retreating to the safety of his shoulder and patting him understandingly.

“That is the God’s honest truth, Alex.”

\--

**October 21st, 2020 [13 Days to the General Election]**

Max arranged a tour-group week for the third week in October, with kids from other countries coming in by the busload.

The first day, a group came with the Brazilian flag sewn onto their backpacks. Alex saw Michael hustle-up from the choir room, eyes wide and embarrassed at his accent as he spoke Portuguese with them. One little boy asked shyly if he could take a selfie with him, and he did.

Michael said: “Hey, can we make this a quick video too?”

The kid nodded.

The little kid held up his phone and had both of their faces in the frame, as Michael said: “I always wanted to go to Brazil. One of the things about not having status is not being able to travel. But, I just want to tell people, that this whole mess, me trying not to get deported, isn’t about there being something wrong with Brazil. It’s just not my home. When my parents left, they made this country, this state, this town into my home. And yeah, they died before they could fill out the paperwork to make it official, but there are all kinds of things in life that are real without being official. People like me used to not be able to get married, so people like me would live for decades, in love with a person, with a home, that wasn't official. And one of the things that is so hard, that is so painful about this, is” he paused, clearly trying to find a PG word, “is that it’s important to me that people know that this isn’t meant to be an insult to Brazil. And when I’m a US citizen someday, I really, really want to come and visit Brazil. To see if I can find some of my, Max’s, and Isobel’s family there.”

A few days later, a postcard arrived. It was in Portuguese.

Alex got the mail that morning and he typed the words into Google Translate and all it said was: “I do not think we are related, but you are my cousin.”

The next day, 5 postcards arrived. Isobel posted pictures of them on Michael’s Instagram.

It became a meme on Brazilian TikTok, writing the letters, duet-ing with videos from the _Songs from Sanctuary_ account.

50 came.

Then 250 came.

And Max called Isobel in a panic, arms full of postcards, and she looked at them and said: “Sometimes, I think that good campaigns are about directing the flow of resources. There are so many resources in the world. It’s just about finding the right place and time for them. So. Who needs these postcards?”

Alex said: “I think I have an idea.”

> Alex to Maria: Where can we do a big art exhibit?

It ended-up at the UFO Emporium, which had been closed for renovations for about 5 years, with most of its extremely dubious collection in storage.  


Maria made time lapse after timelapse of volunteers working on the sanctuary's central red carpet, Michael and Alex helping staple postcards to long spools of fishing line, putting them in careful stacks. They worked their way up and down the line as the stained glass shadows flowed over the pews. 

The day the exhibit opened -- the entire media scrum plus much of the town in attendance -- Alex stayed in the sanctuary with Michael and they watched the cards flow down from the ceiling in a livestream. Isobel had arranged them into the curtains and labyrinths and passageways, filling this warehouse with postcards. 

Postcard after postcard after postcard.

And whenever new ones came, they would build one more piece, one more maze.

She titled it: ”The path to global citizenship.”

And it became another symbol. 

Another reminder that they were being seen. That people would know if something happened.  


There was one postcard, though, that Michael kept out of the display.  


Alex found him, three different times, holding it, stabler hovering over it, before he tucked it in the back pocket of his ragged jeans.

The third time he pulled it out over the nightly volunteer dinner in the parish hall, Alex read over his shoulder something he roughly translated as: ”I think you are my grandson.”

It had a return address in São Paulo.

Alex asked: “Do you want to meet her?”

Michael nodded: ”I wrote her back. And I took a picture of it. And I have it. But --”

He shook his head: “I don’t want to bring a media circus down on her head. This kind of things is —“

Alex nodded: “Yeah, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy either.”

He paused, thinking: "But when you can, you want to go? To see --"

"Where I came from? Yeah." He glanced over at Max and Isobel, heads down, fingers flying fast on their phones. "I don't think they're going to want to. They're entirely focused on integrating. But --"

Alex gave him a half-smile: "It's ok to have a different path than your siblings. God knows I do."

Michael tipped his head over, a concerned look on his face: "Has Harlan or the others been getting on your case?"

"In person? No. And I don't need to watch Fox and Friends to know they hate me."

Michael tucked an arm around his shoulders, mouth quirked. "You've got a lot of family who loves you here."

Alex nodded, tipping his head onto Michael's shoulder. "I know. It's just --"

Michael nodded, pressing a kiss to his crown. "Yeah."

"Did I ever tell you why Tony calls these 'Stone Soup Suppers'?" Alex asked, watching the full table, people jostling with plates covered in Christmas style chili, warm tortillas, bowls of soup Mimi had been cooking weekly and then freezing for anyone who came by unexpectedly.

Michael shook his head.

"It came up in one of the first sermons I heard him give," he said, voice quiet under the hum of the volunteers, "He said it was an Eastern European folks story. Once there were three soldiers," he started, settling his head a little more closely against Michael's shoulder. "They had been at war a long, long time. But it ended. And they came home. Or, someplace that might have been home, but no one knew them anymore. But everyone there, they had survived the war too. For years. As civilians. And no one trusted each other anymore. The three men set-up on the edge of town. One carried a big -- really, a massive -- pot. The other carried a large, smooth, round stone. The third one carried a bucket. They went to the stream and filled-up the pot."

"Now, they had been to towns like this one before. They knew every person was keeping their food to themselves. One man would have potatoes and only potatoes; one woman would have carrots, and only have carrots. One person had chickens but kept the eggs for themselves and those inside their house. No market days when being in public could be a death sentence."

Michael nodded, eyes sad.

Alex kept going: "So the soldiers get the caldron boiling and then go door to door, inviting every single person to supper. Every single one. The man hording potatoes; the woman hording carrots; the family with the chickens. And they scoff at him, but war is boredom, so they come to the little camp on the edge of town to see what's going to happen."

Michael quirked a small smile, listening. Alex realized a few people around them were also eavesdropping and he made eye-contact to include them in the story, keeping his head on Michael's shoulder. "So there's the pot of boiling water and the soldier with the large, round stone raises it high above his head and says: 'this is a magic stone, it will make sure everyone who wants to eat from this pot will become full.' And he gently lays the stone in the pot. He takes out a ladle and tastes it, and says: 'Oh, that is so, so good. It's almost ready. But do you know what would make it even better?'"

Isobel answered: "'Just a few carrots.'"

Alex nodded, smiling. "'Just a few carrots.' The man with the carrots huffs, but he wanders home and comes with a fistful of gnarled, weird looking carrots. The soldier tastes the soup again, says: 'Oh, that's amazing! But do you know what might make it even better?'"

"'Just a handful of potatoes,'" Tony said, grinning. The entire table was watching now.

"'Just a handful of potatoes,'" Alex confirmed. "And on and on -- 'Just a little piece of chicken,' 'just a single cup of rice,' 'just a single onion.'"

He smiled and it felt real, Michael beside him, the entire table watching: "And on and on, just what people could spare, just what people had to hand; just what they could give. A little bit and a little bit."

Tony looked around the table: "And in the end --"

Alex nodded: "In the end, the entire town ate the first full meal they'd had in years. A stone soup supper."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a little note, but there's really nothing better than writing volunteer thank you notes to remind me of why working for our communities is important. Whether you volunteer in social justice work or politics or fandom, you are the reason the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. Thank you.
> 
> Also, Big Dreams/Small Spaces is my entire non-fiction jam, so if you need something calming and sweet during this season of familial expectations and commercialism (or if you like this time of year and just want something nice to watch), I recommend it!
> 
> The song Michael sings Alex is "Ombra Mai Fu" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAP7j3B_yIY) and everything he says about it is what I think is true? Singing the English translation of this is one of my party tricks.
> 
> Also, if you are from a blended family or just need extra encouragement this time of year, I find Barbara Kingsolver's "Stone Soup Supper" essay a pretty cathartic read: https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/09-28-95/cover.htm
> 
> Also, comments are life!!!


	18. how sweet the sound [and hear their death-knell ringing]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new warnings, but Alex talks a bit about his childhood, so be careful with yourselves my beauties and my brains.
> 
> Also, Alex does something a little, gross. People under stress can do weird stuff, and while I wrote it this way on purpose, I get it if it's not your jam.

**October 23rd, 2020 [11 Days to the General Election]**

It was 7pm on a Friday night in Roswell, NM. Max had brought a deck of cards, so he, Michael, Alex, and Isobel were playing Hearts in the choir room. All of the reporters Isobel had gathered to cover Michael’s story were at Happy Hour at the Wild Pony, courtesy of Maria and Mimi DeLuca’s charm offensive. 

The day had been -- normal. Normal-ish. An Orthodox Rabbi and his minyan had been quietly praying in the sanctuary throughout the day.

Max asked Alex, eyes peeking over his flared cards: “So, Alex, what brought you to Roswell?”

“My father’s buried here -- this was his last posting.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Alex gave a tight smile.

Isobel broke in, voice brittle as she laid down a Jack of Spades against Max’s Queen: “You know, I learned a long time ago, when someone tells me that they’re pregnant, I don’t assume they’re gonna feel one kind of way or the way. Why do I get the feeling Max shouldn’t have said ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ but should have said, ‘how do you feel about that?’”

Alex flicked his eyes up to her and then back down at the cards in his hands: ”I don’t know if anybody’s ever asked me that.” Michael subtly moved closer to him, knee nudging his.

Isobel persisted: “So, I hear your father’s dead. How do you feel about that?”

Alex laid down the King of Diamonds and looked her in the eye: “Fucking ecstatic. I’m fucking over the moon.”

Michael cracked up as Isobel said: “So, why do you go to the place where he’s buried? To make sure he didn’t come back?”

“That’s some of it,” Alex said, “I like to know where he’s rotting. Is this too early in a friendship to tell you all weird, bad family stuff? Michael mostly knows.”

Isobel shrugged: “I’m not going to judge you. Fucked-up kind of comes with the territory if you’ve got family in the foster care system.” She reached over to Michael, fingers mussing his already mussed hair as he flapped her away again.

“Yeah,” Michael said, “But we’re not talking about me right now.”

“I uh,” he looked up at the ceiling, “Oh, it sounds so much worse when I say it out loud.”

Michael broke in: “You don’t have to say it --”

Alex said it in a rush, cards forgotten in his hand: “I like to go to his grave once every week and tell him what a son of a bitch he was and how great I'm doing.”

Michael tilted his head: “That sounds kind of cathartic. I wish anybody who had hurt me was dead.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed: “I told you before -- I can help with that.”

“That’s sweet,” Michael chuckled, bumping his shoulder, “I haven’t ever had someone threaten to kill someone to protect me. It’s very kind.” He took a breath: “But no. The best revenge is knowing they have to live their shitty, bigoted, racist lives alone in fucking Carlsbad. Anyway. When I’m out of here, I could go with you or they could --”

Alex shook his head, looking Isobel and Max in the eye: “Thanks, but this is sort of a solo exercise.” 

There was a knock on the door upstairs.

Isobel hopped up: “I’ll get it.”

Alex laid down a three of hearts, listening to Isobel’s heels click on the stairs. 

The knocking came again, louder; it didn't sound like human hands had made it.

Michael's eyes flared and Alex felt fear crash through him -- “Do you think she knows to check the peephole --”

But Alex and Max were already running, shoving themselves up the stairs, Alex getting his camera up and recording just as --

They were through the door, shouting “We heard a disturbance!” in Alex's face as the worshipers scattered. They shoved Isobel to the side, bodies hard as Alex rushed forward with Max, pushing them back towards the door. It was silent -- the ICE agents were shocked they got through, Isobel was shaking with her hands up against the wall. Her eyes were so, so wide, and so so, blue. Max was a fury: Alex had no idea where Max had learned his violence, because it wasn’t the violence of a cop, it was -- the violence of a brother between an abuser and a little brother. It was a protector’s violence, as he pushed and shoved, open-handed, narrow-eyed, they shoved them back, sending the agents tumbling through the door, slamming it closed, and throwing the bolt.

“I’m so sorry I’m so --” Isobel whispered but Alex shushed her as Max pulled out his phone, fumbling the keycode and swearing-up a storm.

“You just assaulted an officer!” came the ICE agent’s scream through the door, “That’s a felony!”

“Eat my entire ass it’s a felony,” Max growled to his phone, before getting it unlocked and dialing.

“Yep, Jeff, we need an observer. Absolutely. Right now. Yes. Right now. I’m so fucking sorry. Someone opened the door and they claimed probable cause and they got in and they're out now, but there’s -- yeah. A shit show. Charges yes, there’s probably going to be charges. We’re just going to -- yeah.”

Alex’s heart was rocketing in his chest, hammering and pounding and cracking him to pieces. He texted the video to Max and Isobel and Michael and the entire choir group, so ICE couldn't just smash his phone to erase it.

He looked through the peephole: six agents in tac gear, guns in their hands. But their postures were relaxed, easy as they watched their commander on the phone. _They got what they wanted_.

They needed a new narrative two weeks before the election, and they’d gotten it.

The Orthodox men went back to their prayers, eyes on the door, hands steady in their laps. 

“I’m going to --” he gestured and Max nodded, eyes on the door, Isobel was unhunching from the wall, body tight, hands in front of her, like she was going to claw their eyes out with those $100 nails if they tried to get through her again.

Alex worked his way down the stairs, hands shaking with adrenaline, calling up into the Warsaw tunnel they’d made for Michael in crawlspace above the choir room. “They’re back outside, love. I’m coming up.”

And then ladder they’d installed swung down, Alex climbing before it touched the ground.

And then he was in Michael’s arms, his body quaking, heart pounding until he felt the other man’s skin, the other quiet of him, his body falling apart and just, so, so sure of his welcome. They pulled up the ladder, setting in the darkness, only enough room to get up on their elbows, the entire long line of their bodies touching in the cramped space.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Alex said, “I didn’t think she didn’t--”

Michael shook his head: “It’s not Iz’s fault. It’s _their_ fault. It’s always and only their fault. Even if I’d gotten taken it would be their fault. Never hers. Never yours. Never mine. It’s their fucking fault. Every day they put on those uniforms, those badges. They walk out into the night and know they are taking families, know they are breaking up communities. They choose not to care. They choose to do this, Alex. They aren’t slaves. They aren’t convicts. They aren’t people without choices. They choose this work. Never forget that. They choose this work.”

Alex nodded, trying to hear past his screaming blood.

“I chose the work too, in Baghdad. In Fallujah.”

”And do you feel you were innocent?” Michael asked, voice like a dagger to an infected wound, cutting right to the rot of it and maybe, in letting the rot leak out, getting some light, some potential for healing in. But it still _hurt_ and Alex collapsed in a little, falling into Michael, body tight, warm, comfortable and sure.

“I did. I was wrong. I was wrong there. I was hurting people and it was wrong. I would have left, could have refused to re-up. But I did it, Michael, I did it and I was like those men, dragging people out of their homes -- not with my own hands. But with the intelligence I brought down for the units I was with. The people who the intelligence came from, how do I know --”

And Michael was shushing him, soothing him, and it was -- not crying. But his body as rocking, hitching, fragmented, unsure. 

There was a knocking at the door, which they could hear a lot better through the crawlspace. Alex and Michael froze, but the cadence sounded different. He heard Max’s footsteps creek across the floor, pausing, maybe in front of the peephole -- church doors don’t usually have them, but drilling it in was one of the first projects Michael had taken up around the place.

“It’s Jeff,” Max called-down, and Alex pressed a kiss into Michael’s hair.

“I’ll be back up soon, ok?” he said, and Michael nodded.

“I’ll be here.”

Jeff was a civil rights attorney who’d sang in the Mr Stinson’s AME choir. His was a face full of lines from a life of smiles and frowns, eyes hard in the gathering night. He was frowning now.

“How bad did we fuck up?” Max was asking when Alex made it back up.

“Well,” Jeff said,”‘Michael will be alright. You being in here isn’t cause for them to burst down the door. But you two,” he pointed to Alex and Max, “You don’t deny that you laid hands on them, tossing them out of here after she let them in.”

And Isobel made a broken sound, sliding down the wall to cover her face in her hands. Jeff looked unimpressed but Alex could see how much it hurt Max to see her so unhappy.

Alex knelt, careful of his leg which was already beginning to sting, sitting beside her, and nudging his shoulder against hers. She stiffened, then after a long moment, leaned forward so he could wrap his arm around her shaking back.

“So, we go to court tomorrow, confess, get, what, a few days jail time?”

And Jeff frowned even harder.

“Confess? Why would you do a dumb thing like that? No court until Monday; no judge is going to call a special session on something this political.”

“They’re wearing body cameras, right?” Max asked. “How are we going to argue we didn’t just assault them?”

"I have it on video."

Jeff nodded: "I watched it on the drive over -- good job getting it recorded live."

Then Jeff smiled: “But you're right, they _were_ wearing body cameras. We can get the whole heap of those recordings into evidence now. Who wants to bet they said something, uh, embarrassing? Off-color? They’ve got a church full of people of color, people of diverse faiths. What's it today -- ” he glanced over their shoulders, to see the Orthodox Rabbi and his minyan quietly praying in the back, “Orthodox rabbi here today? Want to bet they said something stupid, something bigoted, something _viral_ about that too?”

And Max got a look on his face, a look Alex was starting to think of as his political look.

“I bet they might.”

Jeff nodded, smile deepening. “So bright and early tomorrow, I’ll be in court, requesting access to the body cam footage, to exonerate my clients, and while yes, you may be seeing the inside of those pretty jail cells of yours, Maximo, for a few days, we may get something even better.”

“What’s that?” Asked Alex.

Isobel's eyes came up, bright in the darkness, expression grimly determined as her fingers worked over her phone: “Content.”

\--

**October 24th, 2020 [10 Days to the General Election]**

Since no one came to arrest him the next morning, Alex drank three cups of coffee and went to the graveyard as planned. Alex thought he saw a face he recognized on the way in. Fancier clothes, impractical heels, but he didn't worry about it; he'd met a lot of new people in the past month. Maybe someone was actually mourning. He he wanted to tell Jesse something he'd remembered about the Gay Men’s Chorus from DC coming in: there had been a retired full bird colonel who sang with them. A man who would forever outrank Jesse Manes and was as gay as the day was long.

But when he opened his mouth to speak, something else came out: “You know, Dad, yesterday was a bad day. ICE shoved through one of the doors to the church, said they’d heard someone in distress inside. Michael had to stay hiding until we were sure they wouldn't come back. But, you know what, I had a better day yesterday than I ever did when I was living with you.”

“You wouldn’t care. but one of those ICE guys screamed in my face, and I didn’t even think of you. Time was, someone raised their voice, put their hands on me, I was 17 again. Getting dragged by my hair across the living room. This time, all I could think was ‘What a fucking asshole.’ And you know what? I came here, to this weird little town, it was for 6 months recovery. I figured I could tell you what I needed to tell you, then go off someplace else. Someplace where I could _live_. But, that’s not what this became. I needed to come here. I needed to meet Michael. I needed to be here for him in a way that you were never there for me, and you never will be."

"Fuck you, Dad.”

And Alex unzipped his pants, took aim, and pissed, right across Jesse Mane’s name, watching it splash over “Beloved Father to Three Sons.”

\--

That afternoon, Isobel shot him a text.

Isobel: “No one's going to write about the raid for a few days. And for what it's worth, I’m really sorry you got dragged into this, Alex.”

She included a link to Breitbart with the headline: “Illegal’s boyfriend goes to visit his veteran father’s grave and what he does next will disgust you!”

Alex clicked on it then immediately swiped out of the app before it loaded.

Michael must have gotten the same kind of text, because when Alex met him at the choir room door, his face was some kind of delighted.

“Uh, Alex?”

“Yeah?” Taking a hint from the teasing tone in his voice Alex kept his tone light. 

“Um, remember you told us you go every Saturday to cuss out your son of a bitch Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Any chance you do anything else?”

“Isobel already told you.”

Michael was undeterred, eyes dancing with it: “Alex, do you piss on your father's grave?”

“This was the first time.” Alex shook his head: “I don’t know how to excuse it. I know it’s juvenile --”

“I think it’s great. You should pee on everything that makes you mad. Like a golden retriever puppy -- “ And he was lost to giggles, collapsing on his cot and holding his stomach. 

Alex slowly sat beside him, reveling in the feeling of his body laughing beside him. “I don’t think puppies pee on things that make them mad -- they just pee on everything.”

Michael glanced up at him and then lost it again.

Alex tried again: “Look, I know it’s immature. It’s just -- fuck him. _Fuck_ him. Fuck everything he did to me and fuck everything he stood for and fuck everyone he raised and -- fuck him!”

Alex took a breath and felt Michael's hand gentle on his back. “That’s valid. And I'm all for it.”

They took a second to recover themselves. Alex’s voice was small when he asked: “Has anybody picked it up other than Breitbart?”

“Oh, oh yeah,” Michael said, glee filling his voice, “Yeah, yeah they have.”

Alex leaned over, covering his face with his hands. 

Michael patted him gently on the back: “Isobel said your options are,” he held up one finger: “Lay low, let it spin out,” he held up another, “Rip him apart--”

“What?”

Michael cocked his head: “You can tell your side. Harlan’s been talking about what a disgrace you are on national TV for weeks, they owe you some kind of equal time and with Isobel booking you you’ll get it. A lot of people’s Dads mistreated them. Not everyone gets to talk about it. Honestly, most people never get to have any kind of justice.”

Alex’s words were muffled by his hands: ”I don’t think pissing on his grave is really ‘justice’.”

“Yeah,” Michael said, “But you could probably get the _New York Times_ to cover you. Explaining who he was, what he did. Isobel can help you figure out how to do it if it’s something you want to do.”

“Why would anybody care? Nobody cared at the time.”

“Well,” Michael said, slipping his arm over his shoulder, “For the next couple of weeks, I’m still famous.”

“It’s kind of, tacky, isn’t it?”

“‘Tacky’ is just a white people word for things that are too much fun. They said Dolly Parton was tacky --”

“That’s ridiculous, Dolly Parton is great--”

“You can be tacky _and_ great --”

\--

Isobel and Max came by with a tray full of coffees and one, single, tall bottle of lemonade balanced in the middle. Michael lost it again when he saw as Alex, with a certain amount of dignity, reached for one of the iced coffees. He told her about Jesse and Harlan and what happened at the grave. After half-an-hour she held up a carefully manicured hand:

“Well, like I said: no one is going to write about the raid. This is going to be the story for the next few days; sorry. Now, what I got out of what you said is: as part of your recovery as a disabled combat veteran who survived a lifetime of queerphobic abuse only to serve his country, you have been visiting your father's grave weekly.”

“Close enough.”

“And this morning you decided to --” and she paused, face twisting. She tried again: "You took ownership over --" And she paused again, before sighing. “You know, I don’t think there’s a to spin you pissing on his grave. Not that I disagree with the move, but I don’t really know what to do with it.”

Michael shrugged: “Then we don’t spin. We’ll just say it. It doesn’t have to sound respectful. Alex was disrespectful to a grave of a man who didn’t deserve his respect. Respect is earned. Parents have to earn our respect, particularly when we’re adults. And if they don’t earn our respect, then they don’t get to have it.” He looked over at Isobel: “Worshiping authority is what got us into a lot of this mess, it's what keeps more people from fighting back --”

Alex broke in: “They’re going to say it’s a civility thing,”

Isobel shook her head: “Fuck them. There’s two kinds of civility. There’s ‘don’t be an asshole’ civility. Which it sounds like your father failed at every fucking day of his entire fucking life. And then there’s the kind of civility that’s about preserving power, preserving the position of those in authority. We need more of that kind of civility like a kick in the teeth.”

Isobel began to smile: “So, this morning, in a particularly combat veteran way, you demonstrated your lack of respect. I think people will get that.”

She glanced over at Michael: “I think there’s a lot of people who would have preferred to have a chance to say their piece.”

Michael nodded.

Isobel continued: “So, that’s what I suggest. Will that work for you?”

Alex nodded, summing up: “Tell the truth.”

She quirked a smile and it looked just like Michael’s: “Mostly.”

Then she was looking down at her phone: “Ok, so, now: which editor has the most daddy issues?”

\--

**October 25th, 2020 [9 Days to the General Election]**

Mother Jones Headline, above the fold: “Exclusive Interview with Captain Alex Manes About _That_ Tape”

> Roswell, NM -- You’ve probably seen the video; nearly everyone has. Captain Alex Manes stands, back to the sneak holding the camera. A stream of piss hits the grave.
> 
> But it’s all about angles, it’s all about edits in this election. Zoom in, pan a little -- you’ll see some context you might have missed. The grave says: “Beloved Father to Three Sons.”
> 
> Now, Master Sergeant Jesse Manes didn’t have three sons, he had four.
> 
> “I am the youngest in the family,” said Alex Manes when we reached him by phone, “And since I am on disability after my combat injury, my brothers figured I had the time to get the headstone arranged, to manage the burial.”
> 
> When asked why he put false information on the gravestone, Alex Manes disagreed with that characterization: “He was beloved by my three brothers. They are all straight, Republican, two of them are white-passing though they’re as Apache as I am, that is, half. My father didn't love me and I learned to stop loving him. My father hated me because I am gay, tried to beat it out of me before I even knew what I was. Well, I know what I am now: a combat veteran, an immigration reform activist, a gay man, a liberal in a rural county. Jesse Manes was beloved to three sons and never did anything to deserve being beloved by his fourth. So: I told the truth.”
> 
> And about the, uh, leak?
> 
> “It was childish, I know that,” Captain Manes said, voice sounding suitable abashed, “But abused kids are told, over and over, not to cause trouble, not to hurt the feelings of their abusers. To conform to stories about happy families. Well, my family was happy enough to send to me to a dozen schools in dark henleys to hide the handmark bruises on my wrists; my brothers were happy enough to watch me being dragged across the living room carpet by my hair long after they were long out from under my father’s roof. I don’t see any point in protecting people who never did the barest work to protect me when I needed it.”
> 
> He took a breath; it sounds like it hurts. “I protect people now. When ICE tried to break down the door three days ago, I protected the sanctuary of my church. We all have a chance this year, today, to protect people. Maybe not everyone has a sanctuary to stand in front of, between fascists and someone they want to put in a white van to the border, but everyone can vote or take someone to the polls to vote. That’s a kind of fighting back too. And everyone can do it.”
> 
> Watch the video of the raid here \-- it's disturbing stuff:
> 
> He refused to provide further details; the ICE spokesperson for the Southwest region declined to comment.
> 
> So, that’s the deal, dear readers. Alex Manes doesn't apologize for pissing on his abusive* father’s grave and thinks everyone should vote.
> 
> *Editor’s note. The original edition of this post used the word “allegedly” abusive. However, in the hours after posting, Captain Manes’ brother Harlan Manes appeared on Fox and Friends to defend his father, where he said: “Yeah, sometimes he showed Alex the back of his hand, had him go out into the backyard to pick out a cherry switch; but can you imagine how insufferable he would have been if he hadn’t? He did us all a service trying to beat that little fag [bleeped] into submission.” That is corroborating, eye-witness testimony to repeated physical abuse and thus removes the necessity from referring to the deceased as an “alleged” anything. Master Sergeant Jesse Manes was an abusive father, full stop.

\--

In the following days, Jeff made sure their court date was after the election and Isobel ensured there were a dozen stories about the attempted raid, that the video went out to the campaign lists where it would do the most good, rile up the exact right organizers. She also spent every single moment she wasn’t working apologizing to Michael. Coffee and donuts and a new guitar pick and churros and donations to his favorite causes -- and every day, a bottle of lemonade, delivered right to Alex.

Alex had been certain, when he'd first met Isobel, that she was an ice princess in the worst kind of way. But with every bottle he stored in the clinking back cabinet of the parish hall, he realized she was just as much of a shit stirrer as Michael ever was.

Just with better nails.

\--

**November 1st, 2020 [2 Days to the General Election]**

It was 2am and Alex had his feet kicked-up against the wall of the choir room, listening to Michael play the openings to different songs and trying to guess them. Michael had called, said he couldn’t sleep. Two days out from the election, Alex couldn’t either. His video of the raid had turned into the October Surprise the campaign had been looking for -- the screaming, reddened faces of the ICE agents storming into a church struck something in people's hearts who hadn't been moved before. There were rallies, protests, ICE offices barricaded, concentration camps at the border emptied as a tsunami of bail money flooded through them. The other tape faded from view as Isobel had told him it would. But she also had shown him the places where his words, were having an impact. People quoting them online, people using them to share their own stories, their own shows of disrespect. Alex had had to stop reading media entirely, since every mention left him feeling so off-kilter it made it hard to focus.

He was looking forward to this all being over.

In the choir room, Alex tipped his head all the way back, looking at where Michael had just strummed a few chords on his guitar.

“Intro to ‘Welcome to the Black Parade -- something harder.“

Michael grinned over the body of the guitar at him, playing another intro --

“‘Cherry Wine.’ Come on, do you even want to play this game?”

Michael quirked a smirk at him: “There’s a lot of things I’d rather do, but we promised Tony we’d be good, so --”

Alex rotated rightways up, a feeling something light-up his eyes.

“How about ‘anywhere but here’?”

Michael set the guitar down, slipping to the ground, legs folded. His hands went out to cradle Alex’s in his, thumb stroking over the center of his palm.

There was a quiet service above their heads, a group of nuns from Miami covering the night shifts this week. They kept their knees from touching, but Michael’s fingers were hot in Alex’s palm.

“Where’d you come up with all these time-wasters?”

“They’re just roadtrip games,” Alex said, looking to the side. He hadn’t enjoyed much of his childhood, but the long trips across the country, seeing the stars without a single electric light for miles but their flashlights, that had set the bedrock of what he thought of as America.

Michael shook his head a little: “I’ve never been on a road trip.”

Alex stilled, feeling a frown move across his face before he could stop it. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

There was a quiet moment, the nuns above having reached a silent portion of their service. As if drawn directly out of the air between them, Alex heard himself ask: “When this is done, want to go?”

Michael took a breath; they’d never tried to make plans, for when he was out.

They hadn’t set a date for their rescheduled AirBnB weekend, hadn’t planned a birthday party or a post-election celebration.

It had felt like cursing fate, or at least, challenging her to do her worst.

Alex could see all of this flying across Michael’s face; saw him make a decision.

“Hell yeah.”

Alex flattened out Michael’s hand on the floor between them, tracing the heel of his palm. “If this is New Mexico,” then tracing up, catching the edge of a callous, “And this is Colorado,” he made an X in the middle, “This is the four corners, Navajoland.” He walked his fingers across his palm. “So here’s Utah, Bryce, Zion, Kodachrome,” he trailed his finger up to the callous just below Michael’s middle finger, “This is Idaho, and this,” he swept his finger across Michael’s callouses, “This is Montana.” 

He pulled his fingers back, looking Michael in the eye. “So, cowboy, where do you want to go?”

“Hmm,” Michael hummed, turning Alex’s hand over between them, tracing the shame shapes.

“How about,” he started his finger in the bottom right of New Mexico, zagging over the I-15, then straight up through Utah, “We could head up through Albuquerque, over into Utah, up into Idaho and Wyoming, see the Rockies,”

“Sleep under the stars --”

Michael glanced up at the ceiling, face shuttering a little: “I think I’ll be in the mood to sleep outside for a good long while after -- after all this.”

Alex nodded, feeling that in his soul.

He reached out his hand, grasping Michael’s, all map tracing forgotten: “We’ll go anywhere you want to go. As long as you want.”

Michael grinned, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course we will. It will be amazing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Campaign media is a weird place. Don't be too hard on Isobel; she's doing her best in a weird environment. It's hard to for me take any campaign communications seriously, except that the lives of the people involved are very, very real. Next chapter up tomorrow unless my cat decides to take over.


	19. that saved a wretch like me [When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?]

**November 1st, 2020 [2 Days to the General Election]**

As soon as Alex could reasonably expect Max and Isobel to be awake, he texted them:

> Alex: Put me to work on GOTV. I want to help.

It hurt that Michael couldn’t get out and knock doors with him, couldn’t drive people to the polls, but Alex was going stir crazy and needed to do _something_ other than letting his story be used. 

So Alex spent the next 2 days driving people to drop off their vote-by-mail ballots, and arranging groups of people to drive even more people to the polls. Over and over again, he explained how important it was, vital it was, for everyone to vote.

Over and over again, people told him, confident and assured, that New Mexico would go blue for sure. 

For sure.

After a few hours of this, Alex finally snapped: “Do you remember how you felt on November 8, 2016? Yes? Then please. Vote.”

\--

**November 3rd, 2020 [0 Days to the General Election]**

Alex didn’t see Michael until after the polls closed in California. He’d been with Isobel and Max at the Wild Pony, every member of the choir and most of the town crowding dozens of folding tables, turning into a massive turn-out phonebank, making last-minute GOTV calls until the last possible minute.

Then they’d all piled into Alex’s truck and driven through the eerily silent streets to King David’s. It felt like the town, the entire state, the entire country, was holding its breath. _Maybe even parts of the world_ , Alex thought, thinking of the postcard display still hanging in the UFO Emporium.

They watched the election results come in on Michael’s laptop. The Northeast for the Democrat. New York; easy. Pennsylvania, called in the first hour. Wisconsin, Michigan. Virginia. Iowa.

“California is going to be a shitshow,” Isobel muttered, chewing gum and frantically typing on her phone. ‘It’s always a shitshow.”

“They have 40 million people there,” Alex said, “Like one in eight Americans is a California. The state is huge. It takes a long time to --”

“It’s no excuse!” Isobel grouched. “They need to get their shit together.”

Breaking to the Senate. Isobel had explained: “The Republicans have a 3 seat majority. That means, to control the Senate, we need three seats to flip, plus the Presidency, and not to lose a single Democratically-controlled Senate seat. We need four seats if we lose the presidency. We’re going to keep an eye out for Senate seats in Texas, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Alabama, plus keeping Michigan and New Hampshire.”

Maria broke in: “Stacey Abrams has been doing the work in Georgia and Wendy Davis has been rocking turn-out in Texas.”

Isobel smiled, hand going over hers on her knee.

“It’s going to be enough. It _has_ to be enough.”

Alex glanced with a smile over at Michael, but he had his thumb between his lips, eyes intent on Wolf Blitzer’s face.

New Mexico: Blue. Chavez County: Blue. Colorado: Blue. Utah: Blue. 

“Utah?” Max questioned, and Liz shoved her shoulder into his: “Mormons don’t like infidelity any more than any other conservatives do. Also, Mitt Romney spent the last two years making sure they knew it was ok to be a Republican and hate the President.”

He looked dubious, but he cautiously nudged her shoulder back. “It’s just the polling --”

“Ugh, Max!” Maria said, “The only poll that matters is the election. Now shush.”

Montana: Blue. Idaho: Red. Wyoming: Red. Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina: red, red, red.

“It’s ok,” Max said, sounding anything but ok, “We expected that. Texas and California. California and Texas --”

“And Florida,” Michael said, eyes on the screen.

“Yeah,” Max said under his breath, “And Florida.”

And it wasn’t that it had escaped Alex as it was happening, but Max had been, in fact, inviting choirs, pastors and preachers, rabbis and imams, nuns and lay people from every single possible swing state. The entire time. Doing his part of the work, making sure people knew the stakes. Over and over and over again, he’d trotted Michael out, put his story on the line. Told it to so many gaping cameras, into so many hungry microphones.

 _This had better work, Max_ . Alex thought furiously. _It had better work_.

Michael reached between them, sliding his fingers across Alex’s palm and gripping his fingers.

“Ok,” he said, taking a breath, “Ok.”

Nevada came in: Blue.

“Fuck yeah!” Isobel cheered. Jumping up and down, stilettos cratering holes in the carpet, shimmying in her dress, hair going wild. “Fuck! Yeah! Nevada!”

Alex saw Maria’s face, an expression like a revelation moving across it as she watched Isobel lose it in the church basement. Half a second later, Isobel met her eyes and swept across the room, dragging her up off Michael’s cot and into her arms to dance. Alex took her seat, arm going around Michael’s waist, his body a warm, solid weight for him.

Washington: Blue. Oregon: Blue.

Texas, Florida, California, all too close to call.

It was 10pm and no one was going to be sleeping. Michael and Alex went to the parish hall, snagging some snacks. Through the window, Alex could see the ICE agents, huddled against the cold in their trucks, eyes lit by their phones. He leaned against the wall, looking out at them.

“Do you think they voted?” he asked Michael.

Michael shook his head, standing with his back to the wall: “I don’t think I care.”

Alex frowned a little: “I like to remember, when I’m voting, that so is everyone else. Every shitty person with a legal ID can vote. So maybe I’m just canceling someone else out. So what.”

Michael cocked his head. “Did Isobel ever tell you the East Palo Alto story?”

Alex shook his head.

“It’s one of her favorite field organizing stories. She heard it while she was doing her undergrad at Stanford.” He closed his eyes, trying to think. “So, back in 1980, East Palo Alto didn’t exist. Palo Alto did, Menlo Park did, Atherton did -- all these very, very rich towns. But East Palo Alto was below sea level, it was in an unincorporated part of the county. It was where everyone was red-lined into living, so much so that at one point it had the largest group of Pacific Islanders as a percentage of the population outside of Hawaii. It had a massive, strong African American community.”

“But it wasn’t a city. It didn’t have schools or its own police force or anyone to fix the roads. And real estate developers loved it, because there wasn’t anyone enforcing codes or taking a cut of sales other than the county. And the county didn’t care, because it was where all of the maids and gardeners and janitors lived. No one they cared to work for. The crime was so bad, it was called the murder capital of the US in 1992.”

“But the people who lived there, they wanted to be a city. So, in 1980, they voted. They organized and they worked and they fought and in the end they won -- by 13 votes.”

“Now, the man who had been their representative in Congress was a real estate guy and didn’t want them to be a city. So, after the vote, he sued, saying 13 people couldn’t make this kind of choice for a whole city.”

“He sued and he sued and it went up to the district court, over to the federal court, and finally, by 1985, all the way up to the US Supreme Court.”

“And do you know what the US Supreme Court said?”

Alex shook his head. He felt like his eyes were wide, watching Michael tell the story with his hands, eyes sparking.

“They said that we’re a majoritarian democracy. That all it takes to win a vote is 50% of the population, plus one. Fifty percent, plus one. That’s all we need.”

He rubbed his hands through his hair: “When Isobel was there, they’d only had a full-service grocery store for a few years. The law firms they’d attracted to build over what had used to be called Whiskey Gulch -- a corner with five liquor stores -- put ‘Palo Alto’ on their business cards.”

Michael shook his head: “So much disrespect and so much racism. But because they were able to become a city, because they were able to vote, they’ve been able to make-up lost ground. So yeah, I think those douchebags out there got to vote. But so did you. And everyone else in that basement. You more than canceled them out -- and all we need is 50% plus one to win.”

Alex smiled, and then, in full view of the ICE agents, pulled Michael in, kissing him once, full and proud, feeling his warm smile against his lips as his hands snaked around his body.

There was a shout from the basement back under the sanctuary and they pulled apart, dashing back as fast as Alex’s leg would let them go, taking the stairs with Alex’s hand clenched firmly in Michael’s.

There was screaming chaos in the room, but good or bad chaos -- Alex finally grabbed Max’s arm, forcing him to look at them:

“What happened?”

“Texas! Wendy _fucking_ Davis! _Texas went blue!_ ”

“Does that mean --”

Liz yanked Max away from them, stepping all over his feet as she covered his face in kisses: “We fucking did it!”

Alex stared at the screen, eyes searching, some kind of -- there. A graphic. Growing bigger and bigger and -- 

> CALLED: Donald Trump Loses the Presidency.

Alex lost his balance, legs sinking under him and body only cushioned by Michael falling further than faster than he did. He ended-up half-huddled in his lap, his long arms wrapped around his torso as he found himself sobbing, just, sobbing into Michael’s neck as the other man stared at the screen.

\--

**November 4th, 2020 [1 Day After the General Election]**

In the end, Democrats kept control of the House, took the Senate by two votes, three if you counted the Vice President (swapping Michigan's seat for Georgia and picking-up Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina, Arizona, and Texas). They took the Presidency in a landslide.

Max and Isobel drove to Albuquerque to a TV studio to spend the day as talking heads.

Alex stayed at King David’s with Michael, watching news coverage, the celebration rallies; no small number of them had their names, up on signs. 

The ICE agents stayed parked outside; apparently, their orders hadn’t changed. But the sign-ups to attend services were just as full, the list of priests and pastors and rabbis and imams just as long as before the election.

Just 76 more days until Inauguration Day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I grew-up in EPA and the story Michael tells is as true as I know how to tell it. You can read the nitty gritty version of this story here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7hgPliK8x2Z1Gy3Zcslq7XDMTcQ_AxC/view?usp=sharing


	20. I once was lost [In prison cell and dungeon vile]

**[November 17th, 2020, 66 Days Until Inauguration Day]**

Tony sidled over to Alex as he was working on repairing the hinges on one of the kneelers; turned out, they’d been getting so much use they needed oiling now. _Success problems._

“Hey, have you seen Michael?”

Alex stood so fast his balance fluctuated and he had to catch himself on the back of the pew.

“Sorry, sorry, Alex,” he heard Tony say, hand going to his elbow to stabilize him. “I saw him an hour ago. He’s fine. He’s fine.”

Alex took a nose breath, then another one, cracking a rough smile at Tony, who was giving him a fully apologetic expression.

“I just meant -- don’t know if you’ve seen his and Max’s project today?”

Alex shook his head, still trying to get his breathing under control.

Tony’s smile quirked at the corner of his mouth: “Go on back to the sacristy -- you’ll see.”

Alex wiped his hands off on his jeans, tipping the kneeler back up against the back of the pew and pocketing the tube of graphite he’d been using to fix it’s squeak. Then he headed back to the sacristy where months ago he’d hustled a drunk Michael up the ladder before going to sit, back against the door and alone as he waited for ICE to break it down.

He walked past a dozen worshipers -- it was an Episcopalian service today, but rowdier than usual, the sermon less of a book report and more of stand-up. Priests used to giving one sermon a week had found themselves composing one a night and it was really breaking open the material. Alex didn’t know if he’d ever heard so many people laughing in church before this all started. He ducked under a blood red banner -- it was still Pentecost and would be for a few weeks until the greens of Advent started to fill the building.

Alex had always like the story of Pentecost: all those voices, all that confusion, all that madness. The fire hanging over people’s heads. He’d never really gotten why the apostles were so sulky and freaked out in that story, until one late night Tony had mentioned that most of them had been teenagers. He thought of himself at 17 and -- yeah. He got it.

He slipped behind the altar and into the sacristy. It was oddly bright in there, a light stronger than the normally dubious fluorescents cascading down amongst the vestments and books.

Alex tipped his head all the way back -- and laughed. There was now a skylight directly above the entrance to the attic, the ladder leading up to the attic shining in its light.

There was a sound of muffled cursing came down through the open skylight and Alex felt a smile move across his face. He wiped his hands on his thighs again and began to climb.

Once he got into the attic, he was able to lever himself up and through the skylight with a quick hop. Michael and Max were crouched a little lower on the roof, clearing having a quiet, impassioned argument over a box of screws.

“We’ve used flatheads everywhere else, I don’t want --”

“I’m not going to climb down just so you can have _aesthetic consistency --”_ Max growled and Michael threw-up his hands.

Alex looked past them, realizing that because of the shape of the roof, they weren’t visible from any of the parking lots. Because of the height and the angles, the only people who could see they were up there would have to be sitting inside of the attic of the parish hall. It was a private, outdoor space, hidden and safe. _Another exit route,_ Alex’s bastard brain thought.

“Alex!” Michael said and the man half-clambered, half-crawled over to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pressing a warm kiss to his ear, giddy with the fresh air. Max followed after, a little more careful on the roof, giving Alex a stiff nod. Alex wasn’t planning on forgiving Max for Michael being in this situation but they’d both learned to work around that wound.

Michael pulled away, showing off with a wide, sweeping arm: “Isn’t it fucking great?”

It was 50 square feet of peeling asphalt tiles on a slope too steep to walk without at least one hand ready. But Alex could see what he saw, and it had nothing to do with the roof. It had, in fact, everything to do with the _sky._

Wide and arcing, pouring out around them, blue and cloud-strewn and falling on either side of them, down to the reddest mountains and it was -- Alex felt his heart flying out from his fingertips just thinking about it.

“Whose idea was it to open up the roof?”

Michael pointed a clear finger at Max, who shrugged easily.

“I didn’t know how to install it, but I figured, Michael’s great at fixing things.”

Michael’s eyes flared and Alex wondered how often his brother gave him compliments. He wondered how closely he would hold onto this one.

  
But he was back on topic: “We’re going to have a picnic,” Michael declared. “Isobel is bringing supplies.” He squeezed Alex a little closer to him. “We’re the guests of honor, so,” and he patted the slightly sun-warmed roof next to him.

Alex grinned and settled down next to him, content for the next few minutes to sit, arm wrapped around Michael’s back, letting the weak November sun shine down around them, and listen to the man he loved chatter on about the details of getting a sunroof installed in the middle of winter.

\--

**[November 26th, 2020, 57 Days until Inauguration Day]**

“Thanksgiving is an objectively terrible holiday,” Alex Manes declared upon walking into the choir room.

“Is there such a thing as a Thanksgiving Grinch? Might you have just invented it?” Michael retorted back from his perch on the edge of the cot where he was shaving with the help of his phone’s front-facing camera.

“There isn’t, and I reject the implication it is Grinch-ish to not like this genocidal travesty of a holiday.”

Michael sobered, putting his phone down, shaving cream still fluffy high on his cheeks: “There is that.”

Alex threw-up his hands, shoulders feeling constricted by the button-up he’d felt Isobel would guilt him into if he didn’t pre-concede: ”And it’s a celebration of family! Most of whom I don’t even like!”

  
Michael tilted his head, half-shaved face half-hidden in the halflight, expression gentle as he gestured for Alex to join him: “Found family counts for Thanksgiving too.”

Alex huffed: “I guess. It’s just not what the holiday is known for.”

Michael nodded, rubbing first his soft cheek, then his stubbly one against Alex until Alex had to stifle a giggle, and moved away, waving him to finish shaving.

Isobel had planned a big community dinner, with postcard writing to people in the concentration camps, donation stations and a special concert. She’d done a good job of keeping the colonialist bullshit out of it, perhaps pre-conceding to Alex on that, as he’d never mentioned anything to her but she’d tried to figure out a way to make the holiday less God-awful for him.

“How about,” Michael said, voice low and somehow directly linked into Alex’s limbic system, “We have dinner, and be nice, and then come back here and watch A Tribe Called Red perform “Burn Your Village To the Ground” on repeat until someone gets the ovarios to come and stop us?”

Alex cracked up.

But that’s exactly what they did. 

Isobel even sat with him, snacking on pumpkin pie and smiling every time she saw Michael tease Alex into a better mood on what was always going to be a hard day.

\--

**[December 12th, 2020, 41 Days Until Inauguration Day]**

The media scrum that had flourished under Isobel’s careful watch had faded with the election results, but every few weeks, she called a press conference to give updates on the line-up of performers and any big name visitors. She usually had Alex and Max come to stand in the background shots, and answer the occasional question.

Early December was a slow time for news, with most outlets only wanting inspiration porn, so Isobel had arranged a “12 Days of Freedom for Immigrants” fundraiser for immigrant bail funds and was running the briefing before the kick-off event. There was a new face in the back: thick glasses, punky haircut, bright purple lip-liner, androgynous clothes. They raised their hand and Isobel called on them.

“Captain Manes, I don’t understand why you don’t just marry him.”

“What?” Alex said, glancing with wide eyes at Isobel.

They repeated themselves: “Why don’t you just marry him? I mean, if you marry him, he gets a green card.”

Isobel broke in: “Well, there’s laws against that, you can’t just marry someone to get them a green card.”

The reporter was undeterred: “But you love him, right?”

“Yeah?” Alex felt like he was going to melt into the peonies.

“Ok, and you’ve been together for —”

He tried to speak-up: “Three months —”

“Look, I’m not trying to influence the story or whatever in any way, I’m sure they’ll take away my reporter credentials from _The Advocate Magazine_ , but, seriously, if you want him to not get deported, just marry him.”

“I,” he paused, glancing at Isobel, “Uh,” he looked at the reporter’s recording iPhone. All of the reporters were uncharacteristically silent, hands on their recording apps. “Um, I,” all he could think of was the smashed wedding photo, the one his Dad had thrown against the wall when his mother had left him, left them, the glass had cut him when he tried to save the photo, late at night, creeping in the dark. All he could think of was the blood on her white dress, and how he never really wanted to wear a white dress and — then Isobel practically body-checked him out of the way: “We’ll get back to you on that, thanks for coming, see you at the Wild Pony!”

Then she turned her back on the clamoring reporters and though Isobel didn’t grab Alex, which he was grateful for, but she sort of basketball guarded him through the red church doors, basketball guarded him down the aisle, and basketball guarded him into the empty basement choir room. He realized he was breathing hard and tried to steady his breathing. But when he started to talk, his voice was high, stripped of nuance and sense —

“I could have just married him? I could have avoided all of this? I could — why didn’t I —”

“Alex, I mean I’ve only known you for a few months, but I don’t get the impression that, uh,” she paused, glancing to the side and then looking up as if looking for help from above, her words ere soft, clearly articulated and careful, “I haven’t gotten the impression that you have a favorable experiences with traditional heterosexual relationships? So traditional heterosexual markers of stability aren’t things that are going to come naturally to you. Is that right?”

“My dad tried to beat the gay out of me and my Mom left him to it. It seemed like a bad pattern to repeat.”

Isobel let that wash over her and nodded. “So, that makes sense for why you wouldn’t have thought of it. And you’re right, green card marriages aren’t only pretty illegal, they can really fuck-up a relationship. They warp and break and --” and she covered her mouth for a moment, her 24 hr lipstick staying even as she pressed down, changed what she was going to say.

“I think you could two get married. Should, even. But not now. Not until this is long, long resolved. I --” she looked at him and then hissed a breath out, long and hard, and Alex felt himself frown. He hadn’t seen Isobel’s composure crack since that night before the election when ICE had pushed past her into the sanctuary. She turned carefully made-up eyes to him, and there was something lost, something wild about them.

“I know I pushed you, pushed you both --” a breath, hard, and Alex wanted to comfort her, but he had a feeling, that she needed to say this to him, so he held still, “we had to win. I don’t regret anything I did to make sure we did, to keep Michael safe _in the long term_ . But I --” another hard breath, “I would regret it, for the rest of my life, if what we did here hurt what you and Michael have. I want him to be _happy_ . I want you, even though we only are just getting to know each other, to be _happy._ So, of course, a wedding would be media catnip. Of course, I will kill Michael if he doesn’t let me plan it, just like I’ll kill him if Max and I don’t get to both walk him down the aisle.” She shook out her hair, looking just for a moment like the perfect-at-6am Isobel he’d come to know and respect. Then she let her shoulders hunch in a little, let her sculpted brows crease, just a little. “But do it in your own time. On your own schedule. Away from cameras, away from nosy reporters and interview lights. Do it,” she smiled, “somewhere that’s just yours. Make it yours.”

Alex took a short step forward, telegraphing clearly, and wrapping Isobel up in his arms. She held herself stiff, for a long moment, then with a tiny and utterly deniable sound, she hugged Alex back.

—

**[December 23rd, 2020, 30 Days Until Inauguration Day]**

Alex was sweeping the sanctuary at dawn when he heard careful footsteps behind him. The service today was tiny, just a few nuns. The big stuff would start tomorrow, a sub-group of former members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was giving five performances and they expected it to be standing-room only. 

But for now, the sanctuary was quiet.

The winter sunlight was slanting windows of the narthex, the long, thin lines of them cutting across the red carpet. It could have been gauche, upsetting, all those swirling colors on that deep, freshly vacuumed red; instead it felt a bit like breathing inside of a Manhattan. 

And Alex knew the sound of those boots.

In the past few months, it had become their quiet ritual. Michael wasn’t the praying kind -- Alex wasn’t much for silent prayer either, preferring to pray with his feet or his music -- but Michael didn’t mind the quiet of the place

Alex felt Michael sip his arms around his waist and he shuddered with the feeling of it, the sudden release of tension. Christmas wasn’t his favorite holiday, wasn’t much of a treat for him. It never had been. But with Michael there, it was like relaxing into body armor. When you’re out there, soft and vulnerable, it’s a certain kind of tension that filled his body, a feeling, a need to protect himself however he could, muscles trying to become harder than bullets. An animal kind of defense. But when he wore armor, when he engaged in the ritual of arming himself, there were parts of him that could relax, because he know, he _know_ in some indescribable way, that he was protected.

That’s what it felt like, with Michael standing behind him.

\--

**[January 22nd, 2021, Inauguration Day]**

Everyone spent January on high alert. Waiting for a raid. Waiting for retribution. There were rallies in the downtown, counter rallies; people got arrested. Max arrested people. Maria got arrested. Alex cleaned the dust out of Michael’s Airstream and took his truck to the second-best mechanic in Roswell for a tune-up.

Isobel went to DC on the 1st, part of the transition team with a White House comms job in her future. But she’d promised to be back, on the day of.

Inauguration Day had its own intense momentum, it’s own timeline.

Michael’s tiny part of the story would happen around 1:30pm New Mexico time, which was 3:30 in DC. The newly inaugurated President would walk from the steps of the Lincoln Monument back to the White House, where they would sign a pre-written Executive Order re-organizing the Department of Homeland Security to remove ICE and all of its paramilitary internal functions. The same order required all of the concentration camps closed within 100 days. It allocated a billion dollars to the Department of Health and Human Services to place all 40,000 people trapped in them either with friends and family, which most of them had waiting for them, or pay for housing and healthcare for them until they were able to reintegrate. The same order changed allocated another billion dollars for civil legal aid, to allow every person without status in the US to get legal help coming in from the shadows.

Democrats all over the country had run on immigration reform and the House under Nancy Pelosi had already passed massive changes: no more visas which banned people from working, tripling U and T visas, increasing by 10x the caps on all work visas. She would hand it right over to the Senate as soon as the Democratic majority took office and Senator Patty Murray -- the new Senate Leader -- had promised to make that bill Senate Bill 1 of the next Congress.

That was all big picture, big politics stuff.

But for Michael, Inauguration Day would really start with a text from Isobel.

The President would sign the order abolishing ICE, the ICE agents would get a call from their supervisor telling them to stand down, and then he would step outside of the church doors for the first time in 117 days.

Maria had kissed Isobel goodbye at the airport and had taken over the logistics planning for the Inauguration Day picnic. People from all over the country had wanted to be there when Michael walked free, so she’d turned it into a massive party.

Alex was pretty sure he’d seen a bounce house being slowly inflated.

Michael had had one request: he wanted to get into his own truck and drive him and Alex out of Roswell straight from the church. 

“I need to see a different sky,” was all he said.

So all Alex had a bag packed in the back of his truck, packed what Michael had picked out over Facetime from his Airstream. They had a reserved campsite at Zion and enough food for a week under the tarp in the back bed.

At 1:27pm, Michael and Alex stood alone in the aisle of the sanctuary, facing the closed red doors, Michael’s hand gripping his too, too tight. The last service had ended 10 minutes ago and it was the emptiest the church had been in months.

Michael checked his phone: 

> Isobel: It’s done.

She included a picture of the President signing the bill in the Oval Office.

“Ready?”

Michael nodded. “There’s a lot of people out there.”

“It’s our family and friends.”

Michael gave him mocking-wide eyes.

“I _hope_ it’s not your family out there --”

Alex shoot his head. Harlan, once his media fame had run dry, had been reassigned to a base in South Dakota, hundreds of miles from the nearest full-service TV studio. Alex got the impression his entire chain of command had breathed a sigh of relief once he was off the airwaves.

“Nope, none of my family is out there.”

“Just a hundred cameras and a thousand faces.” Michael had said and Alex had nodded, adjusting his weight on his prosthetic. He was wearing a dark button-up, his cane in Michael’s truck. He’d counted the steps between them.

He was staring the doors down when he said, low and under his voice: “I think we get to decide. What family is. Now.”

And Alex paused, had taken a nose breath, and nodded once, hard: “Yeah.”

He took a breath, wondering why this was so much harder than facing down screaming ICE agents. But he made himself say it: “I think you’re my family, my real family. If you’ll have me.”

Michael whipped around, hands going to his elbows: “Yeah?” He said, smile teasing and bright and perfect. Alex nodded.

Then Michael surged forward, mouth covering his, warm and safe and _there_. The doors swung open to cameras and Maria’s good-natured jeering and thousand smiling faces.

There were no ICE agents anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the story of Pentecost -- it’s so weird and bizarre and one of my favorites. It’s also a season in the Episcopal church that lasts from after Easter until before Christmas, so it’s a good one to come to love: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecost#Acts
> 
> I am, in fact, a Thanksgiving Grinch. You can watch the A Tribe Called Red’s video I mentioned here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNi__fnadTM) and because this fic is still my self-indulgent space, here are a few other kickass modern Native American/American Indian/First Nations modern songs: 
> 
> “Facebook Drama” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3f_2deTxA0
> 
> “Stadium Pow-Wow” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEmjW9J3_o
> 
> “Indian City” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4XlYv-gbs
> 
> “Red Skin Girl” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8KFmArXzzU


	21. but now am found [Our thoughts to them are winging]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're earning our rating in this one.
> 
> There's a lot of very self-indulgent political wish-fulfillment in this. I don't expect everyone to agree with everything but if you really want to chat with me about T-visa caps or the value of a North East Dakota, I would, uh, be totally down to gossip about it in the comments.

**[On their own time]**

“So, are we going to stop camping sometime soon?” Alex asked, 6 weeks into their slow tour of the southwest’s National Parks. He had his pension, Michael had his truck and --

“I’m just not sure I can be under a roof anytime soon.”

Alex nodded, stoking the fire. They’d tried just cooking in the Airstream when they’d swung back through Roswell on Week 3, but the fun of running the fire, the fun of cooking their own food over it, getting the shape of the things they ate on their mouths through the slower process, it was all -- something special. Something different.

It turned out, Michael was really good at cooking over a fire. There was -- something -- in his background. Some months he’d lived outside. Some time in his teens he didn’t like to talk about too much. Something that still hurt, but it was a hurt that built him up into something that lived, that thrived, in this environment.

Alex loved that he was still learning things about him, as they closed in on their one-year anniversary.

They were in Monument Valley, eyes bright with the sun every morning. They could camp for up to 2 weeks at a time in each park. So they -- did. They filed the paperwork and went in the campgrounds, they filed the paperwork and went into the back country, hiking until Alex’s leg hurt and then stopping, making camp. 

When the parks started to fill-up with the warmer weather, they headed to the national forests. it turned out, you can camp in any national forest at long as you’re at least a ½ mile away from the road and don’t leave any sign you were there. And the thing was -- Alex could. Alex did. Michael could. Michael did. 

And they got -- the stars. New skies. And each other. The soft moonlight an the slowly warming day and the way that things were just quiet, were just full of light and life and just -- full.

“Works for me,” Alex replied.

And yes, they would go back to Roswell, restart the choir in time for their spring concert. But for now --

“Want to try out Kodachrome?”

Alex nodded, eyes still a little tight, still a little tense.

It had been weeks since Michael could sleep with anything thicker than a tent between him and the open sky. Weeks since the sound or smell of a church, no matter how friendly, was too much for him. He could barely listen to the news, so Alex waited until he was out hiking around, getting his mind off things, until he turned on the news and the news was -- it was _good_.

ICE had been abolished on the first day, officers sent for re-evaluation and re-assignment into what agencies would have them. 

Muslim bans lifted. Trans bans lifted. The global gag rule -- _lifted_.

The State Department’s funding was increased by 10x, embassies filling with Fulbrighters and Peace Corps volunteers, projects growing and flourishing everywhere.

Congress had authorized real, substantive investment in Central American economies, in women-owned and indigenous people's businesses. 

The electoral college -- abolished.

There had been surprises: recognition for the territories had come early -- Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Marianas Islands, American Virgin Islands, and of course Washington DC were all states.

And there were compromises. Because of course there were. There were six new red states to keep the Senate balance, a North East Dakota, North West Dakota, South East Dakota, South West Dakota, Eastern Montana, Eastern Washington. _Fine_. The Senate could stay balanced and the House and the White House could be with the Democrats for all Alex cared. (Harlan now lived in North East Dakota and was by all accounts miserable. _Good_ ).

The Supreme court had 3 new benches, so they could actually hear more than .02% of the total cases referred to them for the first time in a lifetime. An age cap of 80 years old for Justices. It didn’t get Gorsuch or Kavanaugh or Alito off the bench, but it took them from being 1 of 9 to 1 of 27. And the thing was -- that’s how federal appeals court benches worked. There was nothing unconstitutional about it. It was just -- a different way to do it. There was still balance, because railroading people isn’t supposed to be how a democracy operates. But there was -- balance.

There was so much to work for, to wait for. Universal healthcare would take years. Student loan debt, _years_. Ending support for violent and oppressive regimes would take years to unroll, to find better people to fund, to find better people to support.

But the universities were full of exchange students again, after their numbers had cratered. 

There was a new _Old Town Road_ with a verse from the President. And if someone had asked Alex what the #1 song of 2021 would be, he wouldn’t have guessed it would be by a gay, black 22 year old with the President of the United States singing a frankly hype line or three.

So, yeah; trauma. Michael was bearing the brunt of it, but Alex was seeing it too. Was surviving it too. He’d spent months cooped up with him, spent months caring, and he had so little to be worried about, so little to ignore from it. So here he was -- surviving it. Living with Michael and the choices they had together and just -- living. Just -- loving and being together and _free_.

Michael stepped up behind him, slipping his hands around his waist, palms wide and warm and gentle. Alex knew how strong they could be, how scared he could be. How hurried and awkward and anxious and also, yes, so, so brave.

He held him as he’d shaken and murmured his way through nightmares, day dreams of being taken.

And ever since that first night out in the desert there was this too -- the careful slide of skin against skin. The careful continuity, the careful touching, realization that this too was that they needed. This was about surviving, too. This was about building and rebuilding the careful filaments of trust that had had to put the full weight of their lives on long before they were ready. 

But out here, they had _time_. A wide open sky.

Each other.

_Freedom._

\--

Kodachrome was a hidden state park, tucked away near Bryce Canyon. It had millions of years of geology in an impossible red-hued rainbow behind them and a billion stars their only company.

In the warm secret hollow of their tent, Michael crawled over Alex’s sleeping bag, knees bracketing his hips, looking down at him in the swinging light of the flashlight dangling from the roof.

He pushed up on his elbows, pressing his lips to the side of Michael’s face, grinning as he felt his hands unzipping his sleeping bag so Michael could settle heavy and warm between his thighs, soft sleeping clothes slipping beside each other.

“Back when we were first dating, this wasn’t the way I thought it would go,” Alex said with a smile as he slid his hands up Michael’s sides, as he arched his entire body against the other man’s hard body.

“Yeah?” Michael murmured, “How did you imagine it going?”

“Oh, you would get drunk at Halloween and press me up against the brick wall of the Wild Pony, your hand going down the back of my jeans, you hot and ready between my legs and I’d get us out to the truck, but only barely, and I’d blow you in the back, and then we’d drag ourselves to your place, and you’d open me up and we’d just -- go to town.”

“So you though we’d be having sex by Halloween? So I missed out on 3 months of Alex Sex because of all of that shit?” He said, sounding irritated,

“Well, or I would have flipped out about being rushed and run away and never spoken to you again. It’s bad what happened, but at least, this way, we know each other.”

Michael nodded, pulling the collar of Alex’s t-shirt until he could press his lips to the thin skin over the bone there. 

“So,” Alex murmured. “What do you want?”

“I want.” Michael said, grinning freely, ”you in my mouth.”

Alex nodded, feeling his hair flop with the force of it, “Fuck yes, please,”

And so Michael pushed the sleeping bag down, swimming his way down in the bag, until he was just over Alex’s hips.

He pressed a kiss to his lower stomach, tongue flicking out to taste the salty Alex-ness of it, pushing his way down deeper into the sleeping bag,

Michael hooked his thumbs into the shorts Alex was wearing, sliding down them his thighs, and helping him get entirely free of them, and Alex -- every brush against his cock was like being tickled with a low wattage live wire. Something was jumping against his skin at every moment -- Michael’s butterfly light touch, the press of the sleeping back over his body, the brushes of Michael’s shirt against his aching dick. Then Michael, with nothing but a smirk and no word of warning, swallowed him whole. And Alex -- arched up, forearm in his mouth, stifling himself with every ounce of control he’d ever scrounged.

Michael swallowed around him and then, impossibly, improbably, began to hum. And Alex could feel it. Could feel his vibrato humming through the most sensitive nerve of his body, could feel how much his body reacted to the feeling of him, to the sound of him, and his body harmonized with him, took Michael’s rhythm and lived it, fell deeper and deeper into it until he was lost, lost entirely. 

He felt his body start the last arching, curving feeling and gasped out: “This is so close, I’m just --”

And Michael smoothed a broad hand down his side:

“For me, yes, please, Alex, please, for me,” He gasped into his thigh, and then Alex’s breath hitched once, twice, three times, and then Michael was around him again and he was going, pouring out in a long, moaning groan. It meant so much, to be held so gently as he rocked himself apart. To be held so firmly as he needed it, as he needed to to be touched and spread apart and touched and loved.

Once he’d come down enough, he tugged Michael up to kiss him, hand working between him, slipping and sliding, Michael gamely flipped onto his back as Alex unzipped and unbuttoned him, exposing him to the cool night air, palming him as Michael groaned into his shoulder, muffling his own voice against Alex’s trapezius.

“What do you want?”

“Anyway you l want it,” Michael said, voice wrecked.

“No,” Alex said, “Tell me.”

“Your hands on me.”

“Ok, buckaroo,” Alex said and Michael’s eyes lit up, burying his face in Alex’s sensitive skin.

“You know that’s just bad Spanish,”

“Huh?” Alex said, brain still a little sex numbed. 

“Say ‘vaquero’ in a thick, Texas accent.”

Alex did and his eyes widened: “Woah.”

“Yeah,” Michael said,. “They were called ‘cowboys’ because they were mostly black and racists are always dimunizing black people. Herdsmen were white immigrants from the north and Vaqueros were Latino. It was this whole tri-racial terminology.”

“So, I could call you --”

“Vaquero is pretty sexy. Or, even if you want to get fancy, ‘vaqueiro’. Which is the Portuguese word.”

Alex tried to say the word, mispronouncing it a few times, impeded by Michael’s mouth the instant he got it right, grinning against him like he could blot out the sun.

“So, vaqueiro,” Alex murmured, sliding his hands down the warm curves of Michael’s back, as his hips stuttered against his, “you said you wanted --”

“Your hands, God, Alex, _please_ ,”

And Alex grinned, pressing a kiss to his mouth and worked his way to Michael’s front. The skin was velvety and so, so hot in his hand. He twisted his wrist and pulled, Michael’s cock tight and close to his belly, rounding on the top, ticking down to hold his balls before returning to a steady rhythm, spit slicking the way. Alex kept going, kissing and touching, murmuring and moaning and soon Michael was vibrating out of his skin, entire body nearly floating with it. When he came, it was messy and loud and so, so perfect.

It was powerful, this feeling of control, this feeling of rightness, of _trust_. It wasn’t much more than this, two bodies in a desert, touching and loving and being touched. It felt more powerful than any number of testimonies and press conferences and performances. Because this wasn’t a stopgap, this wasn’t a finger in a dam of awful threatening to flood the whole entire world. This was them, moving forward. 

Together.

\--

The first motel they stayed in, Michael took a long, hot shower. So long, Alex thought about knocking on the door. Instead, he found himself humming.

He’d been singing, for months, in services after services after services. He and Michael had traded off DJing, but nothing -- formal. Nothing like a performance.

He began to work his way through the half-remembered lines: “I met a man who had a life out on the road, who had no traits of any value but his smile.”

And it was something -- kind. Nice, even. Something doable, permitable, to just, let his mind wander. Let himself actually relax inside a moment for a bit. He let the notes ride up through him, let his body move with it. No one coming for him or Michael.

Michael came out of the shower, smiling and toweling off his hair, scruff freshly shaved.

“Where do you want to go next?” He asked.

“Someplace new?”

Michael shook his head.

“Are you ready to start heading East? You know Isobel’s been trying to schedule that Congressional testimony.”

Michael made a face, but he nodded; that was better than when Isobel had brought it up on the second week, when he’d responded with a _Fuck no._

“Sure. Why not.” 

He let a grim smile flicker across his face. “Let’s take the long route. Let them wait for us for once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the song Alex is humming in the motel room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Z_BpYCLqU
> 
> Also, I read an article in a 1950s magazine called Arizona Highways that was about that tri-racial terminology for people who worked with cows and yes, I am a giant nerd.


	22. was blind, but now I see [When friends by shame are undefiled]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just two more quick wrap-up chapters! Comments are life and I have so enjoyed getting to hear from all of you! Thank you so much for reading this with me and Happy New Years!

DC was -- a lot more formal than Alex had expected. He’d never rotated through here, never been part of a unit who had. There hadn’t really been family vacations growing up; certainly not after his Mom had left. But with wide streets, neoclassical buildings, and, well, the suits. It reminded him of Germany. Of funerals and people who had no idea who he was. Thankfully, he and Michael didn’t have to be on the Hill until the next day, so they were wearing their best Southwest casual, jeans and button-ups.

“So: we’ve gone to the Jefferson Memorial and read the words; we’ve gone to the Lincoln Monument and read the words. Where else mon Capitan, would you like to go and read the words?” Michael asked, swinging their hands between them like they were school girls. Alex gave him side-eye but grinned:“I was thinking the Indian History Museum.”

“‘Native American’?” Michael asked and Alex rolled his eyes. 

“Yep, but that’s not the name.”

“Feels weird to say it,” Michael said, but followed Alex’s lead as they wandered up the Mall.

It was a warm spring day, school tour groups were flocking around the mall in color-coordinated polo shirts, harried-looking parents and teachers trying to keep them in line as they gawked and goggled the assembled museums of the Smithsonian Institution,

Alex’s eyes were fixed on one pale beige building, built like flowing water, so different and so familiar at the same time. 

His mother had come here, once, when she was in 4th grade; had an annual membership as long as he’d remembered. He knew the museum of the calendars she got every year. She’d told him about it. Told him about the museum and how it had a board of Native American activists, how it told stories that would be lost otherwise.

There was an exhibit on the history of Native American service members, and he wanted to see it. He wanted to know, to see he wasn't the only one to find himself bridging these divides, slicing between these different parts of their worlds. To see other examples of resilience, of pride, of language, of history. 

Over lunch in the best cafeteria on the Mall, Michael got a text from Tony.

> Tony: You up for a quick meeting? The National Cathedral staff was hoping to introduce themselves to you.

Michael showed it to Alex and he nodded. They finished their dinner, Alex bought a membership, and they began the long, slow walk to the National Cathedral.

\--

The staffers were a couple of young priests. They showed them around the cathedral, showed them where a piece of moon rock was embedded in one of the stained glass windows, showing them their choir loft, the Chartres labyrinth, the organ, pretty much anything they wanted to see. They left them to wander on their own, and while Alex checked out the garden, Michael headed off on his own.

It always gave Alex a pang, when he couldn’t see Michael. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but he was working through it. He made himself wait, give Michael some space -- then he went to go and find him.

Alex had found him in the middle of the labyrinth. The design had only one entrance and one single exit. Less a maze and more a way to meditate, to think with his feet.

Alex started to step across the stone pathways to come and give him a hug, but Michael had thrown a face-fit and insisted Alex walk the whole path to come and get him.

And he had.

He had.

\--

“Mr Guerin, thank you for coming before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Today’s hearing is part of our ongoing investigation into the agency formerly known as ICE’s deportation procedures. The purpose of this hearing is to determine the truth, reconcile the alleged injustices, and plan for a more just future as part of our next phase of immigration reform laws. We are grateful for your time.”

“Thank you for having me, Representative Pressley.”

“And Captain Manes, thank you for being here as well.”

“Happy to help, if we can.”

“Alright,” Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said said into her microphone, high white marble walls behind her arching to an impressive dome over the pack hearing room, “you are here today to share your experience between September 27, 2020 and January 22, 2021. Your full statements have already been entered into the record, so you can focus on answering the committee's questions. Before we get started, I believe you both have opening statements?”“Yes, Representative.” Michael said, leaning forward so the microphone caught his voice. He took a nose breath and said:

“I have lived in the United States since I was 4 years old. If I had come to a different state, I would be a US citizen. Heck, if my parents had died in a major city, I would have been a US citizen. But because I went into the foster care system in a rural, underserved community, somewhere along the line, my paperwork was lost. There was no record of me. That meant I had no status, no documentation -- no legal right to stay. I didn’t pursue DACA because I, it turns out rightly, was concerned that those lists would be used against immigrants under a hostile administration. As an adult, I worked, mostly under the table, and -- as many of you know, I also volunteered in the community through music programs. One of those programs, the Queer Chorus of Roswell, is the reason I am here today, indirectly. Because that tiny queer community, I met the people of King David’s Church. Because of them, I met Alex -- Captain Manes.”

“I’m just one of 12 million people in the US living without status. It made me vulnerable -- to foster parents who wanted things from me no child should have to give, from bosses who preferred not to pay, and from a President who wanted to use me as a symbol of something as mythical as a chupacabra -- an illegal alien. Alien is what the law calls me right now, as if I was from Antares. But I’m not. I’m from Roswell, New Mexico. I’m from where I grew up, the same as the people I grew up with. My brother and sister are citizens not because our beginnings are any different, but because their custodians were better at paperwork than mine.” 

“They were lucky.”

“Our country’s immigration system shouldn’t run on luck. It shouldn’t be about hope and tricks and faith. It should be a series of rules, a set of understandable steps. People shouldn’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on dubious immigration lawyers, people shouldn’t have to take jobs under the table, shouldn’t be asked to come up with a stolen social security number so their bosses can hire them.”

“It’s ahistorical, the idea that we have to live like this. There has never been a system that let the American government know every single person who was working in the country. The world doesn't work like that. Borders don’t work like that. They never have, and they never will.”

“What we should have is a clear path to citizenship. That is what other developed countries have. Heck, with my coding skills, I could be a UK citizens in 5 years through their skilled immigrant program. I could have residency in Germany next year. It’s something that I‘ve thought about, wanted to try -- but other than the fact that I don’t have passport and can’t get one from any country given my current situation, I don’t want to live in Manchester or Leeds, in Berlin or Hamburg.I want to live in Roswell, with my boyfriend. I want to live in the place where I grew up, with the people I call my family. I want to just -- live. I’m not hurting anyone, not taking a job that I haven’t earned. I’ve never known any other country to be home. I simply haven’t. And I know that’s had for people like the former president to understand, but it’s -- it’s not complicated. I’m from here. I’ve been from here. I want to stay here. "

"And we can do so much more if we let people come out, come out of the shadows, come out into the world. So, I’m here to tell my story and answer your-questions. And I’ll pass the mic."

“My name is Alex Manes. I retired a captain in the United States Air Force. I grew up all over the place since my father was in the Air Force. I wanted to tell you a story about one of the places I was posted."

"From 2015 - 2017, I was posted in Doha, Qatar. It is a country where 95% of the people who live there don’t have citizenship. It is an incredible wealthy country that is about the size of Connecticut. It is the number two producer of light natural gas, after the United States."

"But think about that. 95% of people don’t have citizenship. Those are almost all guest workers who building roads and buildings, who build the football -- soccer -- stadiums for the FIFI 2022 World Cup, who care for people’s elders and children, who cook their food, who manage their businesses. That includes a small number of US service personnel at our Air Force base, and professors, staff, and many of the students at the universities in Education City, the multiversity where Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Cornell, Virginia Commonwealth, and Northwestern University have undergraduate and graduate campuses."

"It is a way of running a country where the residents have no way to influence the government, can’t vote for so much as a mosquito abatement district. Have no ability to influence their own lives. And people -- well, I had to put up with it, because I was there as part of my service to my country. And most of the guest workers, it is a better choice than many of the other options they may have back home."

"But this isn’t what America should be. The idea that someone can live their entire life in a country and never had the chance to vote for their own representation, the idea that someone can work their entire lives, well into adulthood, and never have the right and responsibilities fo those around, have open season declared on them -- do you know, I know you do but I want it in the record, that reports of sexual assault went down 25% in the month after the 2016 election among Latina women in Los Angeles? That's not because a quarter fewer Latina women were escaping sexual assault. It was because President Trump’s election and virulently anti-immigrant language made so many people afraid to come forward, to allow themselves to come into contact with law enforcement, that people just got to hurt these women and never been held accountable. Not in any way, shape or form."

"I will now take questions. Thank you for your time and attention."

Representative Davis of Texas had the first question: "How would your story have been different, Mr Guerin, if this immigration reform package had passed back in 2005?"

Michael leaned forward: "Well, I wouldn't have been stuck in a church for 117 days, that’s for sure."

A ripple of laughter moved through the committee room and the big hungry eye of the CSPAN camera followed it as it moved. Alex caught Isobel's eye in the back of the courtroom, Max standing beside her. He caught the hint of a smile before he turned back to face the committee.

\--

That night, back in the hotel room near DuPont circle, Michael and Alex shut off their phones, unplugged the TV, and took the longest, hottest shower before ordering every dessert on the roomservice menu and spending the night planning their route back home to Roswell, NM.


	23. How can I keep from singing?

Alex looked into the phone's camera, speaking to the livestream audience: "This is our first performance, since last winter," he panned the camera across the faces of the Queer Chorus of Roswell, up on the little red carpeted stage at King David's. Then he turned, including the entire room, every pew full, with rows and rows of people standing at the back, face after face after watching face.

"We’re going to start out with our theme song. I think you all know it. This Lowry setting, re-arranged by Robert Hugh. Our version of 'How Can I keep from Singing.'"

Michael popped into the frame: "It's a big question," Michael said, taking the phone.“How can we be kept from singing? What can stop us? What can make us give up?"

"Nothing," Maria replied, taking the phone. "Nothing can. We cannot keep from singing." 

She angled the screen so Mimi was in the frame, who spoke slowly but clearly: "While we have voices, while we have hands, so long as we can speak, we must."

Kyle took the camera: "But rarely alone. One of the things Marty, out choir director, always says is that we are not required to complete the work, but neither are we allowed to abandon it."

Rosa snagged the camera, grinning: "So rest, my beauties. Rest and enjoy our beautiful music." She handed it to Liz, who was serious, but with a smile twinkling in her eyes. "Enjoy and rest tonight, because because there are fights to be waged, freedoms to protect and liberties to preserve."

She handed the camera back to Alex: "And singing. Always, always singing.” Alex voice was low and sure, arm wrapped around Michael's waist. "Always voices raised in song, raised together. Singing in a choir taught me organizing, cooperation. Love, trust, and connection. How much we can love one another. A whole world outside of my own -- languages and cultures and peoples. When we sing together, we raise our voices up, raise each other’s voices up and just -- singing because we must. Singing because we need to."

Michael came into the frame, pressed close to Alex: "We can do so much more than just sing, but we must also sing, so that, when they come for us, they will hear we are singing."

He handed the phone to Marty who held it carefully, eyes searching for the camera: "My first music teacher had been a political prisoner in Russia. He was kept there for several years, mostly in solitary confinement. He kept himself sane by reciting poetry he had memorized. He gave our class -- every class he taught -- an assignment to memorize a poem, so if we every found ourselves in political prison, we could have something to keep us sane. And that’s how I feel about memorizing music. It means no one can ever take those away from me. Not with my papers, not with my job or my citizenship. I have these songs, in my head, and no one can ever take them away from me."

He handed the camera back to Alex, whose eyes were bright as he looked straight into the camera.

“Knowing all that,” Alex said, “How can I keep from singing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! 
> 
> Thank you so much for all of your lovely comments, for all of your reading, for all of your amazing selves!

**Author's Note:**

> Updated on 8/2020: In honor of us catching-up with where Alex and Michael started this story, I shared my favorite recording of my high school choir singing this piece. We recorded it in a Czech cathedral on a choir tour of Eastern Europe. I think this recording only exists on my hard drive or the hard drives of the women who were singing in that cathedral that chilly February evening in 2005, so please download it and enjoy it so it continues to exist out in the world: https://jocarthage.tumblr.com/post/625313455044427776/in-honor-of-it-being-the-day-that-my-malex-fic-how. I also did a little typo-hunting, but nothing that should change the story.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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